Of all the mammals, bats have one of the poorest fossil records, with paleontologists estimating that about 80% of it is missing.
This has made it difficult to pinpoint exactly when they first began to fly, or began roosting in caves, or developed their unique way of ‘seeing’ their surroundings in the dark using sound—called echolocation.
But a near-perfectly preserved bat’s skull discovered by French paleontologists in a cave that dates back about 50 million years has shed new light on what we thought we knew about this ancient, hypothetical creature.
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This is really cool, thank you for posting!
I didn’t know this:
Not all bats echolocate, Prof. Hand explains. Flying foxes regularly seen in the Sydney night sky around the Botanical Gardens, Centennial Park and the Royal National Park rely on their very good eyesight to navigate and find fruit, without echolocation.
