"Robert Karl Stonjek"  wrote
>
> Bats have been an evolutionary enigma. That's because the oldest fossil
bats
> look remarkably like modern ones, each having wings formed from
> membranes stretched between long fingers, and ear structures designed for
> echolocation. No fossils of an animal intermediate between bats and their
> non-flying mammal ancestors have been found.
>
That's not much of an enigma. There is a huge niche for terrestrial mammals,
and there is also a very large niche for a flying mammal. However there is
only a relatively narrow niche for an arboreal mammal that can make short
flights from tree to tree. There are a few species of flying squirrels, but
not in Britian, though we have about a dozen species of bats and several
hundred non-flying mammals.
If an arboreal mammal developed full flight and then radiated to fill the
world of opportunity opened to it, it would explain the observation. When
you add the fact that forests tend not to be good places for fossils, then
failure to find the intermediate is not too surprising.
---
þ RIMEGate(tm)/RGXPost V1.14 at BBSWORLD * Info{at}bbsworld.com

---
 * RIMEGate(tm)V10.2áÿ* RelayNet(tm) NNTP Gateway * MoonDog BBS
 * RgateImp.MoonDog.BBS at 11/15/04 5:55:43 AM