[NMCAVER] Giant Fossil Bats Out of Africa

[Minton, Mark]

      Forwarded from Texascavers.  The story is from <http://www.newswise.com/articles/view/538310/?sc=dwhn>, which supposedly has a picture, but the site is inaccessible to the public for another week.

Mark Minton



From: Allan Cobb
Sent: Wed 3/5/2008 9:47 AM
To: Texascavers at texascavers.com
Subject: [Texascavers] Giant Fossil Bats Out of Africa


Giant Fossil Bats Out of Africa


CHICAGO, IL (March 2008) - Newswise - When most of us think of Ancient 
Egypt, visions of pyramids and mummies fill our imaginations. For a team of 
paleontologists interested in fossil mammals, the Fayum district of Egypt 
summons an even older and equally impressive history that extends much 
further back in time than the Sphinx. In the latest issue of the Journal of 
Vertebrate Paleontology, these scientists report on the discovery of six new 
bat species dating to around 35 million years ago, which sheds new light on 
the early evolution of bats.

It took over 25 years of fieldwork to collect the 33 specimens that form the 
basis of the new study. "That translates to a little over one specimen per 
year - a lot of effort for a single fossil," said Erik Seiffert, a 
paleontologist at Stony Brook University. "But it shows just how important 
patience and long term field programs are to science. Our long-term 
commitment to field work certainly paid off in this case." Among the new 
species is "a giant among bats; though weighing in at less than a 
half-pound, it is one of the largest fossil bats ever discovered," said 
Gregg Gunnell, a paleontologist at the University of Michigan.

Fossil bats of Eocene age are rare in Africa. Only a few fragmentary remains 
from Egypt, Morocco, Tanzania and Tunisia were previously known. The 
discovery of six new kinds of bats illustrates the remarkably rich, and 
previously unsuspected, diversity of bats in Africa 37-34 million years ago. 
These discoveries provide important new information for understanding the 
evolution of modern bat families. It was thought that most Old World 
families of bats evolved and diversified in the northern hemisphere, but the 
new study indicates that many modern bat families only diversified and 
radiated after their initial dispersal into Africa. Seiffert noted that the 
Fayum bats include members of the most common and widespread group of living 
bats, "Clearly the modern bat families have very ancient origins, and at 
least some of them probably originated in Africa."

Elwyn Simons of Duke University said, "Interestingly, it seems that 
primitive modern bats may have entered Africa together with primitive 
anthropoid primates. Only then did they diversify and disperse into the rest 
of the Old and New Worlds."

Gunnell hopes that "if we can come to understand the history of how bats 
came to be so intertwined within our ecosystem, then we can begin to 
appreciate them instead of fear them as many people seem to do."
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