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First report of bats (Mammalia: Chiroptera) from the Gray Fossil Site (late Miocene or early Pliocene), Tennessee, USA

Thousands of vertebrate fossils have been recovered from the Gray Fossil Site, Tennessee, dating to the Miocene-Pliocene boundary. Among these are but eight specimens of bats representing two different taxa referable to the family Vespertilionidae. Comparison of the fossils with Neogene and Quaterna...

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Autor principal: Czaplewski, Nicholas J.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: PeerJ Inc. 2017
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5410148/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28462055
http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.3263
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author Czaplewski, Nicholas J.
author_facet Czaplewski, Nicholas J.
author_sort Czaplewski, Nicholas J.
collection PubMed
description Thousands of vertebrate fossils have been recovered from the Gray Fossil Site, Tennessee, dating to the Miocene-Pliocene boundary. Among these are but eight specimens of bats representing two different taxa referable to the family Vespertilionidae. Comparison of the fossils with Neogene and Quaternary bats reveals that seven of the eight specimens pertain to a species of Eptesicus that cannot be distinguished from recent North American Eptesicus fuscus. The remaining specimen, a horizontal ramus with m3, is from a smaller vespertilionid bat that cannot confidently be assigned to a genus. Although many vespertilionid genera can be excluded through comparisons, and many extinct named taxa cannot be compared due to nonequivalence of preserved skeletal elements, the second taxon shows morphological similarities to small-bodied taxa with three lower premolar alveoli, three distinct m3 talonid cusps, and m3 postcristid showing the myotodont condition. It resembles especially Nycticeius humeralis and small species of Eptesicus. Eptesicus cf. E. fuscus potentially inhabited eastern North America continuously since the late Hemphillian land mammal age, when other evidence from the Gray Fossil Site indicates the presence in the southern Appalachian Mountains of a warm, subtropical, oak-hickory-conifer forest having autochthonous North American as well as allochthonous biogeographical ties to eastern Asia and tropical-subtropical Middle America.
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spelling pubmed-54101482017-05-01 First report of bats (Mammalia: Chiroptera) from the Gray Fossil Site (late Miocene or early Pliocene), Tennessee, USA Czaplewski, Nicholas J. PeerJ Biogeography Thousands of vertebrate fossils have been recovered from the Gray Fossil Site, Tennessee, dating to the Miocene-Pliocene boundary. Among these are but eight specimens of bats representing two different taxa referable to the family Vespertilionidae. Comparison of the fossils with Neogene and Quaternary bats reveals that seven of the eight specimens pertain to a species of Eptesicus that cannot be distinguished from recent North American Eptesicus fuscus. The remaining specimen, a horizontal ramus with m3, is from a smaller vespertilionid bat that cannot confidently be assigned to a genus. Although many vespertilionid genera can be excluded through comparisons, and many extinct named taxa cannot be compared due to nonequivalence of preserved skeletal elements, the second taxon shows morphological similarities to small-bodied taxa with three lower premolar alveoli, three distinct m3 talonid cusps, and m3 postcristid showing the myotodont condition. It resembles especially Nycticeius humeralis and small species of Eptesicus. Eptesicus cf. E. fuscus potentially inhabited eastern North America continuously since the late Hemphillian land mammal age, when other evidence from the Gray Fossil Site indicates the presence in the southern Appalachian Mountains of a warm, subtropical, oak-hickory-conifer forest having autochthonous North American as well as allochthonous biogeographical ties to eastern Asia and tropical-subtropical Middle America. PeerJ Inc. 2017-04-27 /pmc/articles/PMC5410148/ /pubmed/28462055 http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.3263 Text en ©2017 Czaplewski http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
spellingShingle Biogeography
Czaplewski, Nicholas J.
First report of bats (Mammalia: Chiroptera) from the Gray Fossil Site (late Miocene or early Pliocene), Tennessee, USA
title First report of bats (Mammalia: Chiroptera) from the Gray Fossil Site (late Miocene or early Pliocene), Tennessee, USA
title_full First report of bats (Mammalia: Chiroptera) from the Gray Fossil Site (late Miocene or early Pliocene), Tennessee, USA
title_fullStr First report of bats (Mammalia: Chiroptera) from the Gray Fossil Site (late Miocene or early Pliocene), Tennessee, USA
title_full_unstemmed First report of bats (Mammalia: Chiroptera) from the Gray Fossil Site (late Miocene or early Pliocene), Tennessee, USA
title_short First report of bats (Mammalia: Chiroptera) from the Gray Fossil Site (late Miocene or early Pliocene), Tennessee, USA
title_sort first report of bats (mammalia: chiroptera) from the gray fossil site (late miocene or early pliocene), tennessee, usa
topic Biogeography
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5410148/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28462055
http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.3263
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