Bat News
Reports from the groups field trips will be posted on this page as well as links to batnews from all over the world. If you find a news story that you think will be of interest please send me the link.
Notts News
2008
A report from the Ploughman's Wood survey 9 May 2008
A report from the King's Stand Farm survey 30 May 2008
2007
A report on a possible Nathusius' Pipistrelle at Colwick Park on 20 April 2007
National and International Bat News
Early Eocene bat discovered
Article taken form the summer 2008 issue of Mammal News, the newsletter of The Mammal Society
For over 40 years, the earliest known fossil bat, and the most primitive, has been Icaronycteris, from the Early Eocene Green River Formation of Wyoming, USA.
A new fossil bat, known from two beautifully preserved skeletons, has recently been described in Nature. A contemporary of Icaronycteris, from the same formation, it turns out to have several more primitive features. It has been called Onychonycteris, "clawed bat", because one of these features is the presence of claws on all the fingers; larger ones on fingers 1-3, and small ones on 4 and 5. Most bats only have a claw on the thumb; Icaronycteris and some pteropodid fruit bats also have a claw on finger 2.
Onychonycteris has relatively shorter forelimbs - a shorter wing, therefore - than any other bat, putting it in between all known bats and non-flying mammals in a plot of relative forelimb/hindlimb length.
Its ear region is so well preserved that its ability to echolocate can be evaluated. The width of the cochlea - the cover over the inner ear - is as small as in the non-echolocating pteropodid fruit bats, and is relatively smaller than in any of the echolocating insectivorous bats. It surely didn't use echolocation. There has been a long debate as to whether bats evolved flight first, or echolocation first (it is easy to conceive of hypothetical non-flying ancestors finding echolocation useful). If echolocation evolved first, then pteropodids evidently lost it. Onychonycteris indicates that flight evolved first.
Onychonycteris has a calcar on each heel, a moderately long tail, and sideways facing hind feet like modern bats. There must have been a tail membrane between these. It has the same number of teeth as Myotis (2.1.3.3/3.1.3.3), and they are conventional insectivorous bat teeth. Perhaps the most remarkable thing about it, for such an early fossil, is that, like /ca ronycteris, is such a beautifully preserved fossil, so that we can say so much about it. Derek W. Yalden
(see Simmons, N.B., Seymour, K.L., Habersetzer, J. Et Gunnell, G.F. (2008) Primitive Early Eocene bat from Wyoming and the evolution of flight and echolocation. Nature 451: 818-822)
Links to Bat News Stories on the Web
A strange place to find a bat!
Radar 'saves bats at wind farms'
