Première occurrence d'un mégachiroptère ptéropodidé dans le Miocène moyen d'Europe (Gisement de Lo Fournas-II, Pyrénées-Orientales, France).

Jean-Pierre Aguilar, Marc Calvet, Jean-Yves Crochet, Serge Legendre, Jacques Michaux and Bernard Sigé

A lot of isolated teeth of a pteropodid fruit bat has been recently found within an assemblage of micromammals recovered from a karstic fissure filling named Lo Fournas-Il near the locality of Baixas (Pyrénées-Orientales, France). The fauna is Middle Miocene Serravallian age. The fossil fruit bat appears morphologically close to Rousettus; its size is that of a recent medium-sized fruit bat. While the fruit bats are very poorly known as fossils, this discovery shows that one of their recent types of dentitions was perfectly established by Middle Miocene times, and supports the presumed long geologic story of the suborder. One of the major invasions of the Old World fruit bats, supposed originated from SE Asia, reached up to Europe. A suborder unit is added to the miocene fauna of this continent.