Bats Originated and Took First Flight in Europe 65 Million Years Ago

Scientists have long struggled to establish where bats first originated, with previous hypotheses proposing Africa, Asia and North America.

A new research has rewritten the evolutionary history of bats, providing evidence the winged mammals most likely originated in Europe during the late Palaeocene, some 65-60 million years ago.

By combining genomic data from all living bat families with ancient fossil records, an international team of 137 researchers from 64 countries working as part of the Bat1K consortium, a global initiative dedicated to sequencing the genomes of all living bat species have reconstructed the evolutionary history of the world's only mammals capable of true powered flight.

The landmark study published in Nature magazine analyzed 103 bat genomes, including 42 newly generated chromosome-level assemblies, representing all 21 recognized bat families.