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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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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
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PeerJ Inc.
2017
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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. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-5410148 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2017 |
publisher | PeerJ Inc. |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
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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