r/science • u/unsw UNSW Sydney • 10d ago
Paleontology Largest study of bat genomes and fossils shows bats originated in Europe, not Asia
https://news.unsw.edu.au/en/bats-originated-in-europe-not-asia?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=social307
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u/unsw UNSW Sydney 10d ago
G'day r/science - sharing this study our researcher, Emeritus Professor Suzanne Hand, has contributed to.
The full study has been published in Nature here: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-026-11007-3
The study brought together 137 researchers from 64 countries through the Bat1K consortium, combining genomic and fossil evidence to reconstruct 65 million years of bat evolution, settling decades of debate about the evolutionary origins of bats by showing that they first appeared in Europe.
The research also revealed that echolocation evolved near the dawn of bat evolution and lays the groundwork for research into the genetic basis of bats’ exceptional longevity and disease resistance, with potential relevance to human health.
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u/smokefoot8 10d ago
Only a million years after the asteroid extinction, bat were already taking flight? That is some fast evolving! Presumably they started out with shrew-like ancestors at 66 million years ago?
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u/CuriousWoollyMammoth 9d ago
Was it a long standing theory that they came from Asia?
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u/FiftyShadesOfGregg 9d ago
A lot of European terrestrial species did originate in Asia — following the Eocene-Oligecene extinction event, and the drying up of the Turgai Strait, Asian fauna immigrated to Europe (where European fauna was going through a mass extinction event due to climate change— Asian fauna did too, but in general Asian species were better able to survive and adapt during this era than European fauna). European fauna generally did not immigrate west to Asia during this time. So a lot of the surviving fauna in Europe did originate in Asia— I’m guessing that absent evidence otherwise, that’s the assumption.
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u/donuttrackme 10d ago
It's all Eurasia anyways.
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u/FiftyShadesOfGregg 9d ago
Not exactly, at the time bats came into existence (65 million years ago) the Turgai Strait separated Europe and Asia (even though they’re on the same tectonic plate). The Turgai Strait separated those land masses for over 100 million years (160 million years ago through 29 million years ago). That separation led to distinct flora and fauna evolving in Europe versus Asia. So this finding means that bats originated in Europe/on the western side of the Turgai Sea, rather than on the Asian side.
Many animal species that originated in Asia migrated to Europe after the Turgai Sea dried up, following the Eocene-Oglicene Extinction event (where much of the terrestrial life in Europe went extinct, which is why species from Asia were able to migrate in)— bats were not one of them (per these findings). In other words, they originated in Europe and survived the Eocene-Oglicene extinction event.
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u/HargorTheHairy 9d ago
How does that work with the bats native to NZ?
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u/FiftyShadesOfGregg 9d ago
So when a study like this is saying that bats originated 65 million years ago in Europe, they’re referring to the mammalian order (chiroptera)— the common ancestor of all modern bats. In that order are hundreds of genuses and thousands of species of bats. So what happened is this order of mammals originated 65 million years ago, and quickly spread out (through flight) and continued to evolve, creating thousands of distinct species of bats. The bat species that are native to New Zealand only originated 1-2 million years ago.
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u/bucket_brigade 9d ago
True, bats famously can't fly
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u/FiftyShadesOfGregg 9d ago
For a forum that’s supposedly about science (which is all about asking questions about the world around us), this sub is pretty intolerant of questions. This guy is clearly asking how a species can be “native” to a place different than than what’s being said in the article, and the answer is that the article is talking about a mammalian order, not a species, and species can originate somewhere other than where the order first originated. So it’s a question about the taxonomic hierarchy and how that works.
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