Dietary and body mass reconstruction of the Miocene neotropical bat Notonycteris magdalenensis (Phyllostomidae) from La Venta, Colombia

With 14 species recorded, the Miocene La Venta bat fauna is the most diverse bat palaeocommunity in South America. They include the oldest plant-visiting bat in the New World, and some of the earliest representatives of the extant families Phyllostomidae, Thyropteridae and Noctilionidae. La Venta’s Notonycteris magdalenensis is an extinct member of the subfamily Phyllostominae, a group of modern Neotropical animalivorous bats, and is commonly included in studies of the evolution of Neotropical bats, but aspects of its biology remain unclear. In this study, we used multivariate dental topography analysis (DTA) to reconstruct the diet of N. magdalenensis by quantitatively comparing measures of molar complexity with that of 25 modern noctilionoid species representing all major dietary habits in bats. We found clear differences in molar complexity between dietary guilds, indicating that DTA is potentially an informative tool to study bat ecomorphology. Our results suggest N. magdalenensis w...