CLIVE: Fossilized remains of a bat species that walked on four limbs and was triple the size of today’s screeching mammals has been discovered in New Zealand.
The new species, Mystacina miocenalis, thrived 16 million years ago in what was a subtropical rain forest and was described in the journal PLOS ONE. It is related to another bat, Mystacina tuberculata, which still lives in New Zealand’s old growth forests.
“Our discovery shows for the first time that Mystacina bats have been present in New Zealand for upwards of 16 million years, residing in habitats with very similar plant life and food sources,” said Suzanne Hand, the lead author of the study, a vertebrate paleontologist at the University of New South Wales in Australia.
New Zealand’s only native terrestrial mammals are three species of bat, including two belonging to the Mystacina genus – one of which was last sighted in the 1960s. Unlike their flying cousins, they are known as burrowing bats because they forage on the ground under leaf-litter and snow, as well as in the air. They scuttle on their wrists and backward-facing feet, while keeping their wings tightly furled.
Scientists long believed the bats had an ancient history and reached as far as Australia. But until now, the oldest fossil of a Mystacina bat in New Zealand was from a cave in South Island, dating to 17,500 years ago.
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