© A.G. Popa-Lisseanu et al.This is what the bat, Nyctalus lasiopterus, looks like nowadays.
Spanish researchers have confirmed that the largest bat in Europe,
Nyctalus lasiopterus, was present in north-eastern Spain during the Late Pleistocene (between 120,000 and 10,000 years ago). The Greater Noctule fossils found in the excavation site at Abríc Romaní (Barcelona) prove that this bat had a greater geographical presence more than 10,000 years ago than it does today, having declined due to the reduction in vegetation cover.
Although this research study, published in the journal
Comptes Rendus Palevol, is the second to demonstrate the bat's presence in the Iberian Peninsula, it offers the first description in the fossil record of the teeth of
Nyctalus lasiopterus from a fragment of the left jaw.
"It is an important finding because this species is not common in the fossil record. In fact, the discovery of
Nyctalus lasiopterus at the Abríc Romaní site (Capellades, Barcelona) is one of the few cases of fossils existing on the species in the European Pleistocene," says Juan Manuel López-García, principal author of the work and researcher at the Institute of Social Evolution and Human Palaeoecology at the Rovira i Virgili University (URV).