Chuck Bednar for redOrbit.com – @BednarChuck
Researchers from the University of New South Wales in Australia have discovered fossils of an unusual new species of bat that lived in New Zealand 16 million years ago. It walked using four limbs and was three times larger than the average modern bat.
The new species, which was described Wednesday in the journal PLOS One, has been dubbed Mystacina miocenalis and is related to another type of bat (Mystacina tuberculata) that can still be found living in the old growth forests of New Zealand today.
The fossils were unearthed in sediment left over from a prehistoric body of water called Lake Manuherikia near Central Otago on South Island. It’s the first time this type of bat has been found in the region for roughly 16 million years, according to lead author Suzanne Hand, a vertebrate paleontologist and associate professor at UNSW.
Ancient bat was larger, heavier than modern counterparts
The new species is said to have teeth similar to its modern-day cousins, suggesting that it ate a broad diet including pollen, fruit, nectar, insects, and spiders. However, the newfound species is about three times larger than its contemporary relative, weighing an estimated 40 grams.
The fossils recovered at the site also included limb bones that showed structures similar to those used for walking. That discovery, combined with the unusually large size of the creature, suggests that it did less in-flight hunting than modern bats. Instead, this bat likely took heavier prey from the ground and larger fruit than its living relatives.
The only terrestrial mammals native to New Zealand are three species of bats, including two that are members of the Mystacina genus. These creatures are also known as burrowing bats since they forage both on the ground and under leaf-litter and snow, scuttling on their wrists and backward-facing feet while keeping their wings tightly furled.
While experts have long believed that these bats had an ancient history in New Zealand, before the discovery of these new fossils, no remains older than 17,500 years ago had ever been found previously. This new discovery “helps us understand the capacity of bats to establish populations on islands and the climatic conditions required for this to happen,” Hand added.
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