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The Secret History of Bats: A New Study Redraws Their Family Tree

The largest analysis of bat genomes and fossils suggests that the first bats emerged in Europe roughly 65 million years ago and that echolocation evolved early.

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By Emily Anthes

Sept. 23, 2026, 11:00 a.m. ET

Bats are cryptic creatures. They inhabit the dark, roosting in hidden, often inaccessible places. And they possess some rare skills that can seem like superpowers: exceptional longevity, advanced echolocation abilities and a capacity for powered flight that is unique among mammals.

But their genes have been difficult to decipher and their fossils hard to find, leaving scientists puzzled about how these traits evolved — or even when and where bats first emerged.

A major new study — the largest analysis of bat genomes and fossils — sheds light on the origins of these mysterious mammals. The study, which was published on Wednesday in the journal Nature, suggests that the first bats emerged in Europe roughly 65 million years ago and that echolocation emerged early, before bats diversified into the many families existing today. It also presents a new evolutionary tree for bats, one that upends some previous conclusions about the relationships between different bat families.

The findings are “rewriting” the biological history of bats, said Ariadna Morales, an evolutionary biologist and research associate at the American Museum of Natural History and an author of the paper. “The evolutionary tree of bats changed.”

The study — which is the first phase of the Bat1K project, an effort to sequence and analyze the genomes of all living bat species — also lays the foundation for additional research into the underpinnings of their remarkable abilities.

“Bats are the most extraordinary of all our mammalian lineages,” said Emma Teeling, a zoologist at University College Dublin and a director of the Bat1K project, who is an author of the new paper. “This is a springboard.”

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