Miniopterus zapfei was described by Pierre Mein and Léonard Ginsburg in a 2002 paper on the ages and faunas of the fossil sites of La Grive-Saint-Alban in southeastern France.[1] Mein and Ginsburg wrote that it was the second fossil Miniopterus species to be described, after Miniopterus fossilis from Slovakia,[2] but did not mention Miniopterus approximatus from the Pliocene of Poland or Miniopterus tao from the Pleistocene of China.[3] Another fossil species, Miniopterus rummeli, was described from the Miocene of Germany in 2003.[4] The specific name, zapfei, honors Helmuth Zapfe, who described M. fossilis.[2] Miniopterus also includes about 20 living species of small, insectivorous bats distributed in southern Eurasia, Africa, and Australia. Although the genus was historically placed in