A 52-million year-old fossil shows bats developed flight before sonar

0 Comments | AFP, February, 2008

PARIS (AFP) — A nearly perfect bat fossil unveiled on Wednesday, has settled a long-simmering evolutionary debate: that the animals could fly before they developed sonar to track and trap their prey.

Most experts had thought it was the other way around, according to the study, published in the British journal Nature.

Echolocation -- the ability to emit high-pitched squeaks and hear the echo bouncing off flying insects as small as a mosquito -- was assumed to be what made a bat a bat.

There are over 1,000 species of bats in the world today, and all of them can ping the air with sound waves.

But some, especially larger fruit bats, depend on their sense of smell and sight to find food, showing that the winged mammals could survive without their...