Bats evolved in Europe, genome study reveals
Summary and headline written by AI from the source article. How we work
An international team of researchers determined that bats originated in Europe, not Africa, Asia, or North America.
The Bat1K consortium analyzed genomes from 103 bat species, combining this genetic data with information from 65 species including 44 fossil species. Statistical models showed a 99.2% probability that the ancestor of all bats lived in Europe during the Late Paleocene epoch, approximately 65 million years ago.
The team found that major bat lineages diversified around 56 million years ago during a period of global warming called the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum. They also investigated the evolution of echolocation, discovering that the ability to use laryngeal echolocation likely developed shortly after bats first learned to fly. A fossil species called Vielasia appears on the oldest branch of the bat family tree, supporting this connection.
Beyond tracing the bats’ origins, the genomic data reorganized the bat family tree, placing the Myzopodidae family from Madagascar on the earliest branch of one group and identifying two other superfamilies as closely related. The analysis also suggests that bats traveled from Europe to North America across the North Atlantic Ocean around 54 million years ago, and did not reach South America by island-hopping from Africa.
