Nycteris
Nycteris comprises a genus of bats commonly called slit-faced or hollow-faced bats. They are grouped in the family Nycteridae. The bats are found in East Malaysia, Indonesia, and many parts of Africa.

Susan Ellis, Bugwood.org · CC BY 3.0 us · via Wikipedia/Commons. May be a photograph of a specimen, or an artist’s reconstruction — an interpretation of a skeleton, since colour and soft tissue are almost never preserved.
On record
Recorded, not inferred- Sits inside
- NycteridaePBDB
- Diet
- insectivorePBDB, for Nycteridae
- Life habit
- volantPBDB, for Chiroptera
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Chiroptera
Time the record covers
At least 3.5 million years on record.
The record covers at least 3.6 Mya to 11.7 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 5.333 Mya to 0 Mya.
5 occurrences of Nycteris on record, most of them in the Pliocene. The Paleobiology Database records this as a living group. Bar height is expected occurrences, not a count: each fossil is spread across the span it is dated to, so a tall narrow bar means tight dating and a low wide one means loose.
When
5 occurrences- Pliocene40%
- Pleistocene40%
- Holocene20%
These are dates about fossils, not the animal: the record can only begin after it arose and end before it died out, so either end may reach further. Shares are expected occurrences: a fossil dated to a span is counted partly in each period it straddles. More on what this infers.
Found in
3 formations
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The named rock units Nycteris has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 2 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Nycteris and its relatives
PlioceneWhere Nycteris and its relatives were recorded in the Pliocene.
Found in the same rock
154 taxa- Epimys (Aethomys)4 sites
- Mus4 sites
- Crocidura3 sites
- Cryptomys hottentotus3 sites
- Dendromus3 sites
- Eptesicus3 sites
- Otomys3 sites
- Rhinolophus clivosus3 sites
- Scotophilus3 sites
- Suncus3 sites
- Tatera3 sites
- Tragelaphus strepsiceros3 sites
- Aepyceros melampus2 sites
- Amblysomus hottentotus2 sites
- Dasymys2 sites
- Elephantulus brachyrhynchus2 sites
- Felis lybica2 sites
- Graphiurus murinus2 sites
- Hystrix africaeaustralis2 sites
- Lemniscomys2 sites
- Lepus capensis2 sites
- Malacothrix2 sites
- Mellivora capensis2 sites
- Myosorex2 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 5 sites for Nycteris, and this reads all of them. The number is how many of those sites it was catalogued from too. The 24 sharing the most are listed.
This is not a list of everything alive at the time. It is only what has come out of the same ground as this animal and been written down.
Entered from
5 references- Pliocene bats (Chiroptera) from Kanapoi, Turkana Basin, Kenya1
- Plio-Pleistocene fossil mammalian microfauna of southern Africa: a preliminary report including descriptions of two new fossil muroid genera (Mammalia: Rodentia)1
- Rodents, Bats and Insectivores from the Plio-Pleistocene Sediments to the East of Lake Turkana, Kenya1
- Structure of Nylsrley Savanna1
- The Mammalian Fauna from the Middle and Later Stone Age (Later Pleistocene) Levels of Border Cave, Natal Province, South Africa1
Each of the 5 occurrences read was entered from one of these publications, ordered by how many each accounts for. This is not a search for papers mentioning the name. Entries link to doi.org where the Paleobiology Database holds an identifier, and to its own record where it does not. Relayed as the Paleobiology Database holds them, not checked against what they resolve to.
Media and terms
Media content1
Picture of Nycteris
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Susan Ellis, Bugwood.org
- Licence
- CC BY 3.0 us
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Nycteris was found in Sketchfab.
Smithsonian Open Access and MorphoSource were not reached for this taxon, so this list is what the others held rather than everything there is.
The description on this site
- Source
- Wikipedia, “Nycteris”
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
This is what the site found, which is not the same as what exists.
Keep going
What may have been alongside itNycteridae through timeFormations of the PlioceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Geoffroy 1803