Parastrellus hesperus
The canyon bat, also known as the western pipistrelle, or American parastrelle is a species of vesper bat. It is found in Mexico and in the western United States. The species has historically been placed in the genus Pipistrellus, but molecular evidence does not show any close relationship with that genus, and accordingly it was classified into its own genus, Parastrellus, in 2006.

NPS · Public Domain · 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.
Time the record covers
At most 12 thousand years on record.
The one occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 11.7 ka and 0 Mya, which is a dating window rather than a span.
1 occurrence of Parastrellus hesperus on record, most of them in the Holocene. 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
1 occurrences- Holocene100%
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.
Parastrellus hesperus and its relatives
HoloceneWhere Parastrellus hesperus and its relatives were recorded in the Holocene.
Found in the same rock
15 taxa- Antrozous pallidus1 site
- Bassariscus astutus1 site
- Corynorhinus townsendii1 site
- Eptesicus fuscus1 site
- Lasionycteris noctivagans1 site
- Lasiurus1 site
- Lasiurus cinereus1 site
- Myotis1 site
- Myotis californicus1 site
- Myotis thysanodes1 site
- Myotis volans1 site
- Neotoma1 site
- Procyon lotor1 site
- Tadarida brasiliensis1 site
- Urocyon cinereoargenteus1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 1 site for Parastrellus hesperus, and this reads all of them. The number is how many of those sites it was catalogued from too.
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
1 referenceEach of the 1 occurrence 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. Each entry links to doi.org. Relayed as the Paleobiology Database holds them, not checked against what they resolve to.
Media and terms
Media content1
Picture of Parastrellus hesperus
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- NPS
- Licence
- Public Domain
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Parastrellus hesperus was found in Smithsonian Open Access and Sketchfab.
MorphoSource was 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, “Canyon bat”
- 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 itFormations of the HoloceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0.