Wild History Secret Story Series (1): Restart 2020, starting with a bat.
In the evolution of tens of thousands of years, human beings know very little about prehistoric civilization, only through the study of fossils left behind, although the evolution of human beings is full of various mysteries, but animal evolution, it can be inferred that the Yumen Gansu bird is considered to be the ancestor of birds.
It is not very long from Archaeopteryx, but it has begun to evolve, but the Gansu bird is more inclined to the Mesozoic dusk bird, and has no direct relationship with the primitive dinosaurs, and the discovery of the Gansu bird constitutes an important physical evidence for the early evolution of discontinuous birds.
However, in 2006, Chinese paleontologists found a new mammal fossil in Ningcheng, Inner Mongolia, this fossil with wing membrane, wing membrane is the flight structure of pterosaur, but this mammal, never found, paleontologists had to re-create a species of "ancient xiang beast" for it.
The ancient Xiang beast lived 125 million years ago, when it was the era of dinosaur life, and the fossil was discovered 1.5 million years before the Yumen Gansu bird, before it was discovered, bats were considered the world's earliest flying mammals, and the oldest bats can even be traced back to 51 million years ago.
From the appearance of the ancient xiang beast, with the special squirrel and bat, covered with hair, there are also wing membranes between the limbs, they can glide freely in the woods, they even escaped the extinction of dinosaurs, before the appearance of the ancient xiang beast, paleontologists believe that large mammals have died, but apparently the ancient xiang beast survived.
The bat fossil found 51 million years ago is the index finger is the bat, its winged thumb is short and powerful, the belt and hind limbs are weak, the skull snout is short, the sagittal ridge is developed, the auditory sac is large, the canine teeth are sharp, and the number of teeth varies from 22 to 38, and it already has all the characteristics of the bat.
Fossils of the index fingered Eda may not be the ancestor of bats, paleontologists believe that the index finger Edamagos is an evolution of the insectivorous species or the suborder Pterodactyceta, but these two fossils have not found much, and the discovery of ancient flying beasts provides a way to study.
Paleontologists believe that bats are likely to have evolved from ancient beasts, and even if ancient beasts are not the direct ancestors of bats, they must be related to bats, such as the pseudo-vampire bat, which was initially thought to be a vampire bat, but later discovered that this bat was a predator of invertebrates.
Their body length is very large, the American tropical face bat is about 13 cm long, they have a variety of species, not many have no tail, they seem to have a relationship with the ancient beast, but because the ancient beast has only one fossil, can not provide more evidence.
There are too many faults between bats and ancient beasts, and the ancestors of bats are still difficult to determine.
Editor: Lin Yuan Fusheng Studio, graphics and text from the Internet.