Rousettus
Rousettus is a genus of Old World fruit bats or megabats, referred to as rousette bats. The genus is a member of the family Pteropodidae. The genus consists of seven species that range over most of Africa to southeast Asia, and the islands of the south Pacific. They are among the few megabats capable of echolocation, and the only genus of megabats known to use vocal echolocation.

Uncredited · 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- Also called
- rousettePBDB
- Sits inside
- PteropodidaePBDB
- Diet
- herbivore, insectivorePBDB, for Pteropodidae
- 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.
11 occurrences of Rousettus on record. 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
11 occurrences- Pliocene9%
- Pleistocene45%
- Holocene46%
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
1 formation
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The named rock units Rousettus has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 10 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Found in the same rock
205 taxa- Mus musculus4 sites
- Reptilia4 sites
- Miniopterus3 sites
- Rattus3 sites
- Aldabrachelys2 sites
- Amphibia2 sites
- Apodemus2 sites
- Archaeolemur majori2 sites
- Atherus africanus2 sites
- Bos indicus2 sites
- Bovidae2 sites
- Canis2 sites
- Canis familiaris2 sites
- Cephalophus2 sites
- Cephalophus monticola2 sites
- Cercopithecidae2 sites
- Cercopithecus2 sites
- Chamaeleo2 sites
- Cheirogaleus medius2 sites
- Chiroptera2 sites
- Colubroidea2 sites
- Cricetomys2 sites
- Cricetulus migratorius2 sites
- Crocidura leucodon2 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 7 sites for Rousettus, 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- Les faunes de vertebres quaternaires en Afrique centrale3
- The use of fish remains in African archaeozoology3
- The microvertebrates of Qesem Cave: A comparison of the two concentrations2
- New findings at Andrahomana Cave, southeastern Madagascar2
- Pliocene bats (Chiroptera) from Kanapoi, Turkana Basin, Kenya1
Each of the 11 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 Rousettus
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- nobody named on the record
- Licence
- not stated by the source
- Commercial use
- cannot be read from the licence given — check the record
No 3D scan of Rousettus 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, “Rousettus”
- 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 itPteropodidae through timeThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Gray 1821