Desmodus draculae (Giant Vampire Bat)

[Melly]

I don't know if this species became extinct before or after 1600 AD. It is perhaps the model of all the demon and vampyre myths from South America.

A giant vampire bat, Desmodus draculae, was found fossilized in a cave in the State of Monagas, Venezuela. The total humerus length of this fossil was 51 mm, compared to an average of 37 mm for Desmodus rotundus, an extant species of vampire bat. The skull length for D. draculae was 31.2 mm. D. r. rotundus has an average skull length of 24.8 mm. The author suggested a late Pleistocene age for this species, but could not rule out a Recent age, so it's possible that this species still survives. Actually, vampire bats aren't that big anyway, so this giant species isn't monster-sized, but it would still be interesting to see.

[Peter]

Maybe in this article they mention the extinction date???

Morgan, G.S., O.J. Linares, and C.E. Ray. 1988. New species of fossil vampire bats (Mammalia: Chiroptera: Desmodontidae) from Florida and Venezuela. Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington 101(4): 912-928.

[aspenparkland]

Hi,

The article is:

Pardinas, U.F.J. & Tonni, E.P. 2000. A giant vampire (Mammalia, Chiroptera) in the Late Holocene from the Argentinean pampas: paleoenvironmental significance. Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology 160 (3-4): 213-221

E-mail me at [e-mail] if you want the PDF.

The case for their survival is made at:

DESMODUS DRACULAE: IS THE GIANT VAMPIRE REALLY EXTINCT? by Angel Morant

extinctanimals.proboards22.com/index.cgi?board=recentmammal&action=post&thread=1109859365&start=0


ttyl,

Kevin

[Melly]

Here is another very informative article about Desmodus draculae and other fossil bats. There is also a picture of a skull.

Late Quaternary Bats From Cebada Cave, Chiquibul
Cave System, Belize


caribjsci.org/april03/39_23-33.pdf

[Muzzle 1]

Could this be the legendary chupacabra that all the people in Puerto Rico are freaked out about? The characteristics are very similiar to that of this giant bat, after I analized pictures and information of both subjects I have noticed ineresting similarities between the two. Check out any chupacabra website to see for yourself. Here is one to start with hopefully oyu will notice these silalarities as well. www.qtm.net/~geibdan/chup/

[Peter]

Some of these mythical creatures might indeed be true living or extinct species! On the Indonesian island Flores there are stories about the Ebu Gogo, a people of small, hairy creatures who stole food from local villagers. These stories might be about the recently discovered fossils of a dwarf human species, Homo floresiensis. So maybe the chupacabra was based on this vampire bat species! Who knows!

[another specialist]

Desmodus draculae
Type specimen: Sección de Paleobiología, Museo de Ciencias Naturales, Universidad Simón Bolívar, Caracas, Venezuela, MUSB 152-85 PB, skull and partial postcranial skeleton.

Type Locality and Horizon: Cueva del Guácharo, Monagas state, Venezuela; Quaternary (late Pleistocene or Holocene); at surface on floor of cave.

Diagnosis (from Morgan et al. 1988b): A Desmodus larger than any other known form (greatest length of skull more than 31 mm versus 27.4 maximum for D. stocki, length of humerus 51 mm vs. 47.5 maximum for D. stocki), but skull more slender and delicate. Mandible with ventral border straight in lateral aspect and with pockets behind incisors virtually non-existent.

Other records:
Toca dos Ossos, Município de Ourolândia, Bahia state, Brazil; Quaternary (late Pleistocene); in association with extinct megafauna (Cartelle and Abuhid 1994; Cartelle 1994).

Gruta de Loltún, Yucatán, Mexico; Quaternary (Pleistocene-Holocene boundary, ca. 10 ka); cave deposits (as D. cf. D. draculae; Arroyo-Cabrales and Ray 1997).

Toca da Boa Vista, Município do Campo Formoso, Bahia state, Brazil; Quaternary (late Pleistocene or Holocene); at surface on floor of cave (Czaplewski and Cartelle 1998).

Caverna Santana, near Iporanga, São Paulo state, Brazil; Quaternary (late Pleistocene or Holocene); at surface on floor of cave (Trajano and deVivo 1991).

Cebada Cave, Chiquibul Cave System, Belize; Quaternary (late Pleistocene or Holocene); at surface on floor of cave (Czaplewski et al. 2003a).

Centinela del Mar, General Alvarado County, Buenos Aires Province, Argentina; latest Holocene (approximately 260-290 radiocarbon years before present; ca. 300 calendar years ago); in a Holocene crotovina intruding late Pleistocene sediments (as D. cf. D. draculae; Pardiñas and Tonni 2000).

www.snomnh.ou.edu/collections-research/cr-sub/vertpaleo/fossil_bats/IT_phyllostomidae.html#Anchor-7431

[another specialist]

Melanie said:

Extinctions which are older than 8000 years (prehistoric times) belongs to the Prehistoric extinct animals order.

ok this just follow ups from your trend fossil giant vampire bats all died way before 1600.

so all three threads as follows should be moved to prehistoric

extinctanimals.proboards22.com/index.cgi?board=bats&action=display&thread=1115319700

extinctanimals.proboards22.com/index.cgi?board=bats&action=display&thread=1115818692

extinctanimals.proboards22.com/index.cgi?board=bats&action=display&thread=1115818005

[Peter]

We have set recent animals extinctions to Holocene animal extinctions, as this is more scientific based than the dates of 1500 AD or 1600 AD. So all animals (but also plants) that came extinct since 8000 BC (10.000 years ago). Also known as the second phase of the current Sixth Mass Extinction. Species before that are considered prehistoric! (see also: extinctanimals.proboards22.com/index.cgi?board=rules&action=display&thread=1115814315)

"Phase two of the Sixth Extinction began around 10,000 years ago with the invention of agriculture-perhaps first in the Natufian culture of the Middle East. Agriculture appears to have been invented several different times in various different places, and has, in the intervening years, spread around the entire globe." (Eldredge 2001)

More on the Sixth Extinction: www.actionbioscience.org/newfrontiers/eldredge2.html.

[another specialist]

I know it's in the wrong category really just a follow up from Melanie thread.......................

[Peter]

I was reading it wrong! Thought you meant that it should be moved, and I assumed it became extinct in holocene times.

Gues it is not, when it became extinct in early Pleistocene (early Irvingtonian) that it should indeed be moved to prehistoric extinct animals.

Is there any dating of fossils from Holocene times?

[Peter]

From the article Melanie (Melly) mentioned: caribjsci.org/april03/39_23-33.pdf.

No specimen of D. draculae has been directly dated radiometrically; most are considered to date to the late Pleistocene by association with other extinct species of mammals in the cave sites. The Argentinian specimen, an isolated upper canine from an open site near Centinela del Mar, Buenos Aires province, is considered to be late Holocene by firm stratigraphic correlation and faunal association (Pardin˜ as and Tonni, 2000).

Given the thousands of bat skeletons observed in Cebada Cave, there are probably many additional species not documented here. The skeletons likely represent a relatively long span of time, hundreds or thousands of years, but until the bones are radiometrically dated it will not be possible to determine their precise age. Few species of bats became extinct in the Neotropics during the Quaternary (Morgan, 1999). The only extinct bat in the Cebada Cave is the large vampire, Desmodus draculae. This species has been reported from a few localities in South America but no specimen has been directly dated. These records are typically assumed to date to the late Pleistocene because the species is extinct, but some indirect dates on materials associated with extinct vampire bones are relatively young. The record of D. draculae from Argentina is from sediments containing a fauna indicating the late Holocene and is associated with radiometric dates of about 300 years ago (Pardin˜ as and Tonni, 2000). This record may be unusually late because it is from a coastal area. Coastal records of the extinct North American vampire D. stocki from the Channel Islands, California, are also much later than continental records of the species. This is presumably because the large mammals that provided them with blood went extinct on the mainland, while on the coast and islands, sea lions and seals, on which modern vampires (D. rotundus) feed continued to exist (Guthrie, 1980). The other Cebada Cave bats, by virtue of their lack of a calcite rime, probably date to the Holocene. The Cebada Cave D. draculae, with its thin covering of calcite, may not date to the Pleistocene. Local calcite deposition within a cave can vary greatly in the amount deposited, depending on conditions, and the amount of calcite is at best only a rough indicator of age. Some archeological artifacts in Belizean caves illustrate this phenomenon; for example, in the Actun Kabal section of the Chiquibul Cave System, a one-meter-tall stalagmite formed on one pottery bowl situated under a water drip, whereas another vessel immediately adjacent to it has almost no calcite deposition (McNatt, 1996: fig. 1). Nevertheless, in the absence of radiometric dates, we tentatively consider the Cebada Cave D. draculae to represent a Pleistocene occurrence of the species. The absence of the extant vampire, D. rotundus, from Cebada is interesting in light of the presence of D. draculae. As has been suggested by Morgan et al. (1988), Arroyo-Cabrales and Ray (1997), and Czaplewski and Peachey, in press), D. draculae, D. stocki, and D. rotundus may represent clinal temporal and/or geographic variants of a single species lineage. However, the two radiometric dates associated with D. draculae at coastal sites mentioned above place it in the late Holocene (Guthrie, 1980; Pardin ˜ as and Tonni, 2000) whereas the species has also been found in caves in South America in association with extinct Pleistocene megafauna (Cartelle and Abuhid, 1994; Czaplewski and Cartelle, 1998). Remains of D. draculae and D. rotundus were found at Toca da Boa Vista, Brazil, but not in association (Cartelle and Abuhid, 1994). Moreover, in a different Brazilian cave (Gruta dos Brejo˜ es), a D. rotundus cranium was found adhering to the underside of a dung bolus attributed to the extinct sloth Nothrotherium maquinense. The dung was dated to 12 200 ± 120 radiocarbon yrBP (Czaplewski and Cartelle, 1998). Thus, minimal evidence argues for contemporaneity and against D. draculae being a chronospecific antecedent of D. rotundus.

[another specialist]

Thanks for extra information very interesting - so possibility it survived more recently but not proved as of yet. But anything is possible....

[another specialist]

admin said:

www.criptozoologia.org/giantvampire.htm

a fuller article can be found here

Desmodus draculae : is the giant vampire bat really extinct ?

by Angel Morant Forés

perso.wanadoo.fr/cryptozoo/dossiers/desmoduseng.htm

[pisanino]

I am looking for these papers:

- Morgan, G. S., O. J. Linares, and C. E. Ray. 1988. New
species of fossil vampire bats (Mammalia: Chiroptera:
Desmodontidae) from Florida and Venezuela.
Proc. Biol. Soc. Wash. 101:912-928.

- Trajano, E., and M. de Vivo. 1991. Desmodus draculae
Morgan, Linares, and Ray, 1988, reported for
southeastern Brasil, with paleoecological comments
(Phyllostomidae, Desmodontinae). Mammalia
55:456-460.

- Pardinas, U. F. J., and E. P. Tonni. 2000. A giant vampire
(Mammalia, Chiroptera) in the late Holocene
from the Argentinean pampas: Paleoenvironmental
significance. Palaeogeogr., Palaeoclimatol., Palaeoecol.
160:213-221.

Is there anybody so kind to contact me at: [e-mail]?

Tks a lot!

[Melanie]

I fear that no one of us have these papers because they are host at servers like www.bioone.org where the download is rather expensive.

[ucucha]

I can have a look in the library of the Dutch Natural History Museum (Naturalis), if you want.

[another specialist]

that would be grateful ucacha - we would all love to see and read a bit more about this species

[ucucha]

That won't be possible I fear; I can only copy it and say what's in it.

[another specialist]

ucucha said:

That won't be possible I fear; I can only copy it and say what's in it.

What would be ok mate - no problem