A new study combines the largest-ever set of bat genetic data with fossil evidence to reconstruct how bats evolve over deep time. The researchers report that the evolutionary history of bats can be traced back to at least 65 million years ago, helping clarify relationships among major bat lineages and timing of key diversification events.
The work uses genome information from many bat species alongside the fossil record, aiming to resolve uncertainty about when different groups arose and how major evolutionary transitions occurred. While the outlets emphasize the study’s scale—describing it as the largest combined bat genome and fossil analysis—coverage aligns on the central finding: bats’ evolutionary origins and early history extend to the mid-late Cretaceous period, rather than being confined to later geologic eras. The differing emphasis is mainly on methodology and significance, rather than on conflicting results.
