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Wednesday, November 11, 2009

Photo: Early Bats Flew First, Developed "Sonar" Later


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This 52.5-million-year-old fossil shows that bats learned to fly before they developed their internal "radar" for hunting, a new study says.

The primitive bat lacked the skull features needed for echolocation—possibly laying to rest a theory that the mammals' insect-sensing abilities evolved before flight.

Photograph courtesy Royal Ontario Museum, 2008