Vespertilio
Vespertilio is a genus of bats in the family Vespertilionidae. The common name for this family is vesper bats, which is a better-known classification than Vespertilio. They are also known as frosted bats.

Mnolf · CC BY-SA 3.0 · 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
- VespertilionidaePBDB
- Diet
- omnivorePBDB, for Vespertilionidae
- Life habit
- volantPBDB, for Chiroptera
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Chiroptera
Time the record covers
At least 85 million years on record.
The record covers at least 85.7 Mya to 129 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 89.8 Mya to 11.7 ka.
12 occurrences of Vespertilio on record, most of them in the Pleistocene. 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
12 occurrencesThese 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
2 formations
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The named rock units Vespertilio 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.
Vespertilio and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Vespertilio and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
398 taxa- Microtus6 sites
- Myodes6 sites
- Canis lupus5 sites
- Cervus5 sites
- Equus5 sites
- Mimomys5 sites
- Myotis5 sites
- Apodemus sylvaticus4 sites
- Citellus4 sites
- Lepus4 sites
- Pliomys4 sites
- Sorex4 sites
- Sorex minutus4 sites
- Allocricetus3 sites
- Apodemus3 sites
- Aves3 sites
- Beremendia fissidens3 sites
- Felis3 sites
- Homotherium3 sites
- Myotis bechsteini3 sites
- Myotis emarginatus3 sites
- Ochotona3 sites
- Panthera gombaszoegensis3 sites
- Rhinolophus ferrumequinum3 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 10 sites for Vespertilio, 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
9 references- Mittelpleistozane Saugetierfaunen aus Mitteleuropa - der Versuch einer biostratigraphischen Zuordnung2
- Pleistocene vertebrate faunas of Hungary2
- Preliminary report on a recently discovered Pleistocene cave deposit near Cumberland, Maryland2
- The First Representative Vertebrate Fauna from the Late Miocene of Southern European Russia1
- The early Pliocene Micromammalian Fauna of Bilike, Inner Mongolia, China (Mammalia: Lipotyphla, Chiroptera, Rodentia, Lagomorpha)1
- Le gisement Pleistocene moyen et superieur d'Artenac (Saint-Mary, Charent): premier bilan interdisciplinaire1
- I giacimenti Quaternari di vertebrati fossili nell'Italia Nord-Orientale1
- Les Formations continentales du Neogene superieur des vallees du Jucar et du Cabriel au ne d'Albacete (Espagne). Biostratigraphie et environment.1
- Die Oberkreide vom Mungofluß in Kamerun und ihre Fauna1
Each of the 12 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 content2
Picture of Vespertilio
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Mnolf
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 3.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
3D model
- Source
- Sketchfab
- Licence
- CC0 Public Domain
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
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, “Vespertilio”
- 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 itVespertilionidae through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Linnaeus 1758