'[Sonja Vernes] and Emma Teeling at University College Dublin decided 10 years ago that they wanted to sequence the genomes of every bat on Earth "because they're such amazing creatures."' 'They built a collaboration of 600 researchers around the world, including 137 from 64 countries who are co-authors on the new paper.' | This is the data set which enabled the recent flurry of articles about bats originating in Europe ~65 million years ago, and developing their echolocation and disease resistance early as well.

The largest analysis of bat genomes and fossils suggests that the first bats emerged in Europe roughly 65 million years ago and that echolocation evolved early.