Tag: bats
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Smithsonian: Paleontologists Discover 52-Million-Year-Old Bat
Smithsonian Magazine has a story about a fossil bat from Wyoming. Bats are underrepresented in the fossil record due their small size and even smaller bones. Unfortunately, they also live in areas that don’t usually form fossils. The Green River Formation in Wyoming, which dates to the Eocene about 52 million years ago, has yield…
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Palaeocast Episode 130: Bats
Palaeocast podcast has a new episode. This one is about bats. After rodents, bats are the second largest group of mammals, representing a staggering 20% of all mammal species. They can be found all over the world, with the exception of cold climates, where they often play incredibly important ecological roles. Their ecologies (ways in…
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PBS Eons: When Bats Took Flight
PBS Eons has a new episode about bats. Bats are very rare in the fossil record and thus we still have much to learn about their evolutionary history. What came first flight or echo-location? Bats pretty much appear in the fossil record as recognizable, full-on, flying bats. And they show up on all of…
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Newly Discovered Bat-Like Dinosaur Reveals the Intricacies of Prehistoric Flight
The Smithsonian has a story about a new “bat-like” dinosaur from China. This animal lived about 160 million years ago in the middle Jurassic. It’s called Ambopteryx longibrachium and it’s seems to be related to Yi qi, which was described back in 2015. The description of Ambopteryx appeared recently in the jounal Nature. About 160…
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The FM’s Emily Grasle Meets a Pregnant Bat and the World’s Largest Spider
If you haven’t seen “The Brain Scoop” on youtube, head on over here and and check it out. In the latest show, she’s searching for bats and finds a huge spider in the Amazon. Emily is the Chief Curiosity Correspondent of the Field Museum in Chicago. Always an interesting show. They post new show pretty regularly…
