April 21, 2025
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What is the mystery behind bats’ success in being the only flying mammal?

  • May 8, 2023
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Besides being associated with vampires, source of COVID-19 A lot of people don’t look at it the way they used to. Although we remember bats with these evil

What is the mystery behind bats’ success in being the only flying mammal?

Besides being associated with vampires, source of COVID-19 A lot of people don’t look at it the way they used to.

Although we remember bats with these evil qualities, these strange creatures that have been floating in the sky in darkness for millions of years How did it begin?

The first bat fossils date back to the Eocene, nearly 50 million years ago.

bat fossil

As a result of their research in different regions, paleontologists North America, France, Australia and India They had encountered teeth and skeletons in many other areas such as

However The shapes of bats have not always remained the same.: There are differences between their modern relatives compared to their ancient fossils. The ears of fossils are very different from the ears of the bats we know today.

While evolved bats only have claws on their thumbs, fossils show that a bat can have five claws.

The 52 million year old Onychonycteris found in the US state of Wyoming. A fossil thought to have been found in the shape of five claws.

bats Besides the fact that they have existed all over the world since ancient times and have almost similar shapes, there was a question that intrigued the scientific world: when did the only flying mammal have wings.

Many creatures in the past have evolved to take on their current form, just as whales have a similar past.

from the University of Birmingham against Emily Brown Primitive bats are known to live in forested ecosystems, and fossils cannot leave any remains in these regions. So there is a gap in the history of bats and the data is incomplete.

Even looking at the oldest bat fossil, the claw structure reveals it to be a bat. According to paleontologists, it is the oldest living bat species.mousetail bat”. This species takes the position of fluttering in the air rather than moving off the ground like the bats we know.

So actually it doesn’t have such a complicated answer as we expected! The fact that bat records are not formed because of the ecosystem is also a challenge for scientists.

bat

As we explained above, with bats fluttering in the air and taking the ideal flying position floating through the air explains the flying start of the bats. Unfortunately, before new fossils are discovered, what science can offer is limited with this information.

other mammals, makes it easier for us to draw conclusions about bats. Because these gliding species, such as flying squirrels and lemurs, can prove that bats also evolved this way.

At the beginning of our article, we talked about the mystery of these creatures. Mysteries persist. If enough fossils can be found when scientists make new discoveries, we can explain more clearly how these mysterious animals got wings.

Sources: Tübitak, North American Nature, An Evaluation of the Bat and the Forest

Source: Web Tekno

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