A walking bat in New Zealand took its marching orders from an ancestor, a new fossil-bat discovery reveals. Scientists had long thought that the lesser short-tailed bat evolved its walking preference independently. Since the bat's native habitat lacks predators, researchers reasoned that—much like flightless birds on isolated islands—the bat had adapted to its safer surroundings in part by walking. But the discovery of fossils of a now extinct walking bat in northwestern Queensland, Australia, suggests that the modern-day bats descended from 20-million-year-old Australian relatives. "We were amazed to find they were virtually identical to the bats in New Zealand today,"...
