Genomes and fossils point to a European origin for bats 65 million years ago

Bats, and with them powered flight in mammals, most likely first evolved in Europe around 65 million years ago, according to a study published in Nature on September 23, 2026. The work, by 137 researchers from 64 countries in the Bat1K consortium, combined genomes from living bats with fossil evidence to redraw the bat family tree.

The paper is titled "Reference genomes and fossils revise bat family phylogeny and biogeography."

A large genomic data set

The team analyzed 103 bat genomes, representing all 21 recognized bat families, according to the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin. ScienceDaily, reporting on a University College Dublin release, said 42 of these were newly generated chromosome-level assemblies. The researchers also incorporated evidence from 44 fossil bats from around the world.

Bats are a large group: there are more than 1,500 living species, making up about one-fifth of all living mammals.

The authors also report the first reconstruction of an ancestral bat genome, according to the Berlin museum. Michael Hiller of the Senckenberg Research Institute, a senior author, said: "We combined state-of-the-art DNA sequencing and computational methods to generate and compare these genomes."

Out of Europe

The results point away from earlier proposals that bats arose in Asia, Africa or North America. According to Phys.org, the analysis suggests bats originated in Europe and then dispersed to Africa, establishing a Europe-Africa hub from which they spread into Asia, the Americas and Australia.

Emma Teeling of University College Dublin, a co-founding director of Bat1K, said: "It is extraordinary, after decades of research and conflicting findings, we finally have a robust phylogenetic tree that we can now use to properly understand how and where bats' unique traits evolved." She added: "As bats are the only mammals known to have evolved true powered flight, our findings point to Europe as the most likely place where mammalian powered flight first evolved."

Liliana M. Dávalos of Stony Brook University, a senior author, said: "The approach we used to model the evolution of fossil and living species together can do what other methods cannot -- identify the oldest group of fossil bats while taking the genomic data into account, and uncover when and where bats originated."

Echolocation came early

The study also finds that echolocation, like flight, evolved early. According to the Berlin museum, the fossil bat Vielasia places echolocation before the diversification of modern bats. Another fossil discussed in the coverage, Palaeochiropteryx tupaiodon from Germany's Messel Oil Shale, is 47 to 48 million years old, ScienceDaily reports.

"Bats constantly surprise us. They are one of evolution's greatest experiments," said Sonja Vernes of the University of St Andrews, also a co-founding director of Bat1K.

Why it matters

Bats have long been hard to place on the mammal family tree because their early fossil record is sparse and earlier genetic studies gave conflicting answers. By combining a large set of high-quality genomes with fossils, the study offers a single framework for when and where bats arose and how quickly flight and echolocation appeared. The genome resource is also meant for other researchers to use in studying bat biology.

Sources

This article was drafted with AI assistance and checked against the sources above. Company claims are reported as claims. Cover image is AI-generated.