> ## Content Index
> Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.gottabekidding.me/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further.

# Bats Likely Took Their First Flight in Europe
- URL: https://www.gottabekidding.me/bats-likely-took-their-first-flight-in-europe/
- Published: 2026-10-28T10:04:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-28T10:04:00.000Z
- Description: Three continents had a claim on the first bat. A mountain of genomes and fossils points somewhere else, and roughly half of every bat family's past is still missing.
- Author: Out of Bounds
- Tags: Nature, Halloween Week

Late in the Paleocene, somewhere in what is now Europe, a mammal probably took to the air under its own power. The 1,500-plus living bat species, more than a fifth of every mammal species on Earth, likely descend from that one ancestor.

That's the verdict of a study in Nature. The team paired chromosome-level genomes for 103 species of bat, covering every one of the 21 families, with 44 fossil species and a catalog of 699 anatomical traits. Earlier work had pointed to North America, Africa or Asia as the birthplace. Their model favors Europe at better than 99 percent, and the researchers reject the older candidates.

From Europe, the lineage most likely pushed into Africa. Out of that shared base, separate groups fanned out to Asia, Australia and the Americas in a tight burst during the early Eocene. The big bat superfamilies probably split apart around 56 million years ago, while global temperatures were climbing. One group reached North America about 54 million years ago, likely over a land route across the North Atlantic, then worked south. The model throws out the idea that bats island-hopped from Africa to South America.

Sonar is old, too. An extinct bat called Vielasia lands in the oldest branch of the tree, which backs the idea that bats were calling out and reading echoes before living lineages diverged. That placement carries only medium confidence.

Gaps remain. Even after the team's method shrank them, roughly half of each bat family's history has no fossils to show for it.

The oldest bat skeletons already come with wings and sonar. Their European ancestor left no tracks at all. Hard to blame it. It was flying.

**Read the full story at** [Nature, September 23, 2026](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-026-11007-3?ref=gottabekidding.me)

---

**Hot Take:** The bat in your attic is a European expat. It just lost the accent somewhere in the Eocene.