All but three ground mammal specie living on New Zealand today were bring there by modern humans , beginning around800 year ago — and all three of those aboriginal mammal coinage are bat . But a new fall upon bat dodo suggests that there may be more species enshroud in the isle ’s ancient rock . Perhaps the mammal - short islands once had a far more dotty past .
A team of researchers from Australia , New Zealand , and the U.S. announced that they ’ve discovered grounds of an nonextant chiropteran species call Vulcanops jennyworthyae . The at-bat itself is weird — it was big and in all likelihood burrow in the background . But it also reveal a strange evolutionary account of mammalian on the island .
“ This fossil squash racket indicates that there once was greater ecologic diversity in the New Zealand ’s squash racquet fauna , ” the generator save in the study published lately in Scientific Reports .
The researchers determined they ’d see the new species from analytic thinking of a jaw fragment with tooth encounter in southern New Zealand , in rock that was around 20 million geezerhood old . This does n’t voice like a lot to go off of , but again , the country only has three squash racquet mintage on it today — so see 20 million class onetime squash racquet teeth is definitely unusual . These tooth were pretty gravid , suggesting that the bat was omnivorous and weigh around 2 ounces — larger than the other bat species on the island , and perhaps the size of a modern vampire bat . The teeth also show similarity to those of the res publica ’s modern burrowing bat , lift the possibility that this out bat was also a burrower .
This discovery is surprising in its own right field , said Nancy Simmons , curator - in - mission at the Department of Mammology in the American Museum of Natural History , who mould on this research . But a uncanny squash racket species can state some of the history of New Zealand ’s ecology . “ We ’ve now lost some of the ecological variety present during that time , ” she said , “ Because we do n’t have a squash racket of that physical structure sizing and those traits live today . ”
The subject area does n’t say much about non - bat species , Simmons tell Gizmodo , but does imply there may still be more surprises to be line up on New Zealand — and elsewhere .
“ We can guess that anywhere on the satellite there are nonextant animals we haven recover yet , ” she state . “ It ’s exciting to find something new and different you were n’t expecting . ”
[ Scientific Reports ]
australiaBiologyEcologyPaleobiologyScience
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