Aurochs-Bos primigenius

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Aurochs-Bos primigenius


A life restoration of the aurochs. © @ phan-tom

Temporal range: Pleistocene-Holocene (Gelasian-Holocene; 2Ma-1627 CE)

Scientific classification:

Life
Domain: Eukaryota
(unranked): Unikonta
(unranked): Opisthokonta
(unranked): Holozoa
(unranked): Filozoa
Kingdom: Animalia
Subkingdom: Eumetazoa
(unranked): Bilateria
Clade: Nephrozoa
Superphylum: Deuterostomia
Phylum: Chordata
Clade: Olfactores
Clade: Craniata
Subphylum: Vertebrata
Infraphylum: Gnathostomata
Clade: Eugnathostomata
Clade: Teleostomi
Superclass: Tetrapoda
Clade: Reptiliomorpha
Clade: Amniota
Clade: Synapsida
Clade: Eupelycosauria
Clade: Sphenacodontia
Clade: Sphenacodontoidea
Order: Therapsida
Suborder: Cynodontia
Clade: Prozostrodontia
Clade: Mammaliaformes
Class: Mammalia
Legion: Cladotheria
Sublegion: Zatheria
Infralegion: Tribosphenida
Subclass: Theria
Clade: Eutheria
Infraclass: Placentalia
Subcohort: Exafroplacentalia
Magnorder: Boreoeutheria
Superorder: Laurasiatheria
Clade: Ungulata
(unranked): Cetartiodactyla
Clade: Artiofabula
Clade: Cetruminantia
(unranked): Ruminantiamorpha
(unranked): Ruminantia
Infraorder: Pecora
Family: Bovidae
Subfamily: Bovinae
Tribe: Bovini
Genus: Bos
Species: B. primigenius
Subspecies: †B. p. primigenius
†B. p. namadicus
†B. p. africanus
B. p. taurus
B. p. indicus

The aurochs (Bos primigenius; "firstborn cow") was a species of wild cattle that survived until the 17th century and the progenitor of all modern domestic cattle.

Description:
It was a large animal. In the Holocene of Germany and Denmark, bulls would have usually been about ~1.55-1.8 meters tall at the shoulder, while cows would have been smaller at ~1.35-1.55 meters. In Hungary, the maximum size of bulls was shorter, ranging from ~1.55-1.6 meters.[1] Aurochs could have weighed ~700 kilograms. Some time in the Pleistocene epoch, they could have weighed as much as ~1.5 metric tons.[2] As typical for bovids, aurochs possessed horns. These horns could be ~80 centimeters in length and ~10-20 centimeters in diameter (so they were quite long and thick).[3] The horns were curved "upwards and outwards at the base, then swinging forwards and inwards, then inwards and upwards" (Wikipedia quote) and likewise pointed forward. The trunk was about as long as the shoulder was tall as a result of the longer and more gracile legs (compared to a significant deal of domestic cattle). Furthermore, the skull was apparently larger and longer than in most domestic cattle. Judging from the body morphology of the aurochs, it would have been rather athletic and bulls in particular had substantial neck and shoulder musculature. Overall, the forequarters were larger than the hindquarters, unlike its modern domestic descendants. One could only barely see the udders in lateral view, even in cows. Calves had chestnut-colored fur. Cows stayed this way as they matured while bulls acquired darker fur with a light dorsal stripe.[2]

Natural history:
In the Pliocene epoch, colder climates led to greater grasslands and in turn, the evolution of large grazers. The taxa Bos acutifrons likely evolved into Bos primigenius. Aurochs first appeared ~2 million years ago in India. The Indian aurochs was the first subspecies to appear. Aurochs subsequently colonized the Middle East and more to the east. They made their first appearance in Europe ~270,000 years ago.[2]

Diet:
Based on its hypsodont dentition, the aurochs was a grazer. It wasn't a browser or semi-intermediary feeder.[2]

Behavior:
Based on domestic cattle, aurochs social status was granted via combat and display.[3] There are reports of horrible fights among bulls. Mating season was from late summer to early fall and calves ended up being born in spring. Cows cared for their calves until the latter was able to be with the herd within feeding areas.[2] According to contemporary accounts, aurochs were apparently quick and could be substantially aggressive. They apparently didn't seem to mind humans if they came close unless they had the intention of teasing or hunting them, in which they'd respond with aggression (understandably).[2]

Predators:
During the Pleistocene, large felids and hyaenids could have preyed upon aurochs. Wolves could have preyed upon calves as well.[2] Humans were another predator of the aurochs.

Domestication:
Aurochs gave rise to all modern taurine and zebu cattle. Taurine cattle (B. p. taurus) originated in the Near East during the Neolithic (~10.5k years ago)[4][5] from Eurasian aurochs (B. p. primigenius). Zebu cattle (B. p. indicus) are descended from the Indian aurochs (B. p. namadicus) and domestication would have occurred ~9k years ago.[6] Sanga cattle (cattle found in Africa) are thought to have originated from hybridization between taurine and zebu cattle, although there is some indication that they actually arose independently with hybridization only occurring within the last few centuries.[7]

Extinction:
The wild Indian aurochs is believed to have disappeared ~4k years ago due to interbreeding with their domestic counterparts and population fragmentation from habitat loss.[8] The North African aurochs likely went extinct before the Middle Ages began (ergo, before the 5th century CE).[2]

As such, only the nominate subspecies (B. p. primigenius) survived until recent times.[10] The ancient Romans apprehended many wild aurochs for usage in arena fights.[9][2] Aurochs were still present in large numbers during this time, but then they were hunted to near extinction.[2] By the 13th century, aurochs were limited to just Poland, Lithuania, Moldova, Transylvania, and East Prussia.[10][2] Eventually, only nobles (and this was later restricted even further to just the royal household) were permitted to hunt aurochs anywhere. Notwithstanding the eventual termination of aurochs hunting, the requirement of gamekeepers to provide open grazing land, and the establishment of capital punishment as a consequence for aurochs poaching, the species just couldn't survive.[10] The last aurochs was a cow that died in the Jaktorów Forest, Poland in 1627.[9][10]

Hunting was one of the overall causes of the aurochs' extinction.[9][10][11] Furthermore, and as ironic as it was, there existed competition for feeding grounds between wild aurochs and their domestic counterparts.[9][11] The last population of aurochs lived exclusively in Poland and a lack of inclination for the conservation of aurochs, corruption within it, diseases and competition brought upon by their domestic counterparts (again, as ironic as it was), and to a lesser extent hunting killed them off.[9]

Technically (to say the least) the aurochs is still extant in the form of domestic cattle. Incidentally, some domestic cattle today actually physically resemble the wild aurochs.


Mounted skeleton of an aurochs.


Cave painting of aurochs in Lascaux.


A Spanish fighting bull, an example of a cattle breed that resembles the aurochs.

References:

[1] "Aurochs and potential crossbreeding with domestic cattle in Central Europe in the Eneolithic period. A metric analysis of bones from the archaeological site of Kutná Hora-Denemark (Czech Republic)" (Kysely, 2008).
[2] Cis Van Vuure (2005). Retracing the Aurochs - History, Morphology and Ecology of an extinct wild Ox.
[3] "Der Auerochs: Das europäische Rind." (Frisch, 2010).
[4] "A Complete Mitochondrial Genome Sequence from a Mesolithic Wild Aurochs (Bos primigenius)" (Edwards et al., 2010).
[5] "Modern Taurine Cattle descended from small number of Near-Eastern founders" (Bollongino et al., 2012).
[6] www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=12692&page=96
[7] "An African origin for African cattle? — some archaeological evidence" (Grigson, 1991).
[8] Mahesh Rangarajan (2001). India's Wildlife History.
[9] www.petermaas.nl/extinct/speciesinfo/aurochs.htm
[10] www.iucnredlist.org/details/136721/0
[11] Mario Melletti & James Burton (2014). Ecology, Evolution and Behaviour of Wild Cattle: Implications for Conservation.

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Foraging habitats and niche partitioning of European large herbivores during the Holocene – Insights from 3D dental microwear texture analysis

Environmental changes related to forest expansion and later to agricultural development and deforestation during the Holocene in Europe have strongly shaped herbivore distribution and habitat selection, leading to species extinction. In this paper, we examine, through dental microwear textural analysis, the foraging habitats, dietary flexibility and niche partitioning of large herbivores (100 to 1000 kg) including two bovids (European bison Bison bonasus and aurochs Bos primigenius) and two cervids (moose Alces alces and red deer Cervus elaphus). The study focuses on northeast (NE) and south central (SC) Europe during three periods of the Holocene: Neolithic (6500–3500 cal yrs BP), Roman Period and Middle Ages (~2000–450 cal yrs BP) and Recent times (1963–2014). Our study highlights differences in diet between species only in the Neolithic SC Europe. This may have resulted from diversified habitats and dietary niche separation in SC Europe. The absence of differences in NE Europe may suggest more homogeneous habitat conditions in combination with lower densities of large herbivores in forested habitats. Analysis shows that during the Neolithic, in the bison diet there was more herbaceous monocotyledons in SC Europe than in NE Europe. We also found temporal changes in microwear texture variables for the bison in SC Europe suggesting a more herbaceous diet in the Neolithic than during the Roman Period and Middle Ages. However, neither spatial nor temporal differences in microwear texture variables were found in the aurochs. Thus, the diet of the European bison has likely changed, which may indicate a greater plasticity that promoted survival in refuge habitats.

The diet of aurochs as reflected by dental microwear texture parameters did not change over the course of time or geographical distribution. Our results suggest low flexibility of aurochs feeding preferences. In interglacials during the Middle and Late Pleistocene (MIS 7, MIS 9, MIS 11) Bos primigenius was also recognized as a mixed feeder or browser (Rivals and Lister, 2016). However, according to stable nitrogen isotope analysis, the diet of early Holocene Scandinavian aurochs (10,000-8000 cal. BP- before the appearance of the earliest domesticated cattle) was dominated by grasses (Bocherens et al., 2015; Noe-Nygaard et al., 2005). European bison is the species that showed the highest variations in dental microwear and thus presumably in the diet through time and space during the Holocene, which supports the idea that bison might have had a higher adaptability than moose or aurochs, which progressively became less abundant and distributed or even extinct, in the case of the latter.

sci-hub.tw/10.1016/j.palaeo.2018.05.050

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Interesting news! The aurochs might have survived in forests in Bulgaria up to a century after it was originally thought to have gone extinct.

The last Bos primigenius survived in Bulgaria (Cetartiodactyla: Bovidae)

A horn-core of Bos primigenius excavated from the depth of 537.3-537.4 m in the late medieval deposits of the second half of the 17th century to the 1st half of the 18th century AD is reported. This record suggests that the aurochs survived in the Central Balkans a century later than the reported known date (1627) from northern Poland.

www.researchgate.net/publication/358501342_The_last_Bos_primigenius_survived_in_Bulgaria_Cetartiodactyla_Bovidae

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The genomic natural history of the aurochs

Now extinct, the aurochs (Bos primigenius) was a keystone species in prehistoric Eurasian and North African ecosystems, and the progenitor of cattle (Bos taurus), domesticates that have provided people with food and labour for millennia. Here we analysed 38 ancient genomes and found 4 distinct population ancestries in the aurochs—European, Southwest Asian, North Asian and South Asian—each of which has dynamic trajectories that have responded to changes in climate and human influence. Similarly to Homo heidelbergensis, aurochsen first entered Europe around 650 thousand years ago, but early populations left only trace ancestry, with both North Asian and European B. primigenius genomes coalescing during the most recent glaciation. North Asian and European populations then appear separated until mixing after the climate amelioration of the early Holocene. European aurochsen endured the more severe bottleneck during the Last Glacial Maximum, retreating to southern refugia before recolonizing from Iberia. Domestication involved the capture of a small number of individuals from the Southwest Asian aurochs population, followed by early and pervasive male-mediated admixture involving each ancestral strain of aurochs after domestic stocks dispersed beyond their cradle of origin.

www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-08112-6