Egyptian Fruit Bat Rousettus aegyptiacus (Geoffroy, 1810)

Anatomical correlates and nomenclature of the chiropteran endocranial cast

“…and summarizes its descriptions at the order scale, both regarding the brain macromorphology and the "cranio-cerebral topography" (which corresponds to the endocranial cast morphology in that work). Schneider (1966) also describes the brain of Rousettus aegyptiacus in details and provides outstanding high quality representations and descriptions of the brain together with a three-dimensional stereotaxic atlas (in transversal plane, as in other stereotaxic atlases published since [Schneider 1966, Baron et al 1996, Bhatnagar 2008, Scalia et al 2013, Washington et al 2018, Radtke-Schuller et al 2020], but also in parasagittal and in horizontal planes). Schneider's descriptions and figures are a tremendous contribution and are indubitably helpful regarding brain external morphology and endocranial casts studies.…”

“…Comparative neurobiology studies often study brain in "too much" details to be directly applied to paleoneurology; internal structures of the brain cannot be studied in paleoneurology. Works such as those of Schneider (1957Schneider ( , 1966 therefore bridge a gap between comparative neurobiology and comparative anatomy of endocranial casts. and micromorphology.…”

“…Together, these two works give a large anatomical basis to work with. Then, several other studies worked on these grounds to complete anatomical observations and homologies (Buchanan & Arata 1969, Kallen 1977, Wible 1984, 1987, Diamond 1991, Wible & Davis 2000 Schneider (1957Schneider ( , 1966, Henson (1970) and Hackethal (1981) for the identification of the nervous structures, and Tandler (1899), Grosser (1901) and subsequent works for the identification of vascular structures. We use Anglicized terms of the Nomina Anatomica Veterinaria (NAV, 2017) or of the Latin terms of the previously cited articles if missing in the NAV.…”

“…4A): the olfactory bulbs at the anterior extremity of the telencephalon; the anterior olfactory nuclei ("regio retrobulbaris" in Schneider [1966]) which are the visible part of the olfactory peduncles (Cleland & Linster 2019); the olfactory tubercles; the piriform lobes ("pseudotemporallappen" in Schneider [1966]). According to Schneider (1957), the rhinal fissure is only embodied by the circular fissure, and the imprint on the lateral aspect of the However, by looking carefully at Schneider's transversal sections (Schneider 1957(Schneider , 1966, one can notice that he spotted the rhinal fissure a bit dorsally to a slight impression, where there seems to be a change in the nature of the pallium. For this reason, we do not follow Schneider's (1957) assumption (see also the 'Neopallial foldings and cortices' section) and we assume that a rhinal fissure can be detected on endocasts by a depression.…”

“…The specificities of bats ecology necessarily reflect on their central nervous system, and the brain has therefore been widely studied. Several works looked at the general morphology and diversity of the brain, with comparisons between and within chiropteran families (Schneider 1957, 1966, Henson 1970, McDaniel 1976, Hackethal 1981, Baron et al 1996, Neuweiler 2000. However, most studies have focused on volumes and sub-volumes of the brain in order to correlate neural volumes to ecological traits (e.g., Mann 1961, Stephan & Pirlot 1970, Jolicoeur et al 1984, Hutcheon et al 2002, Safi et al 2005, Dechmann & Safi 2009.…”