The Aurochs: The Beefy Ancestor of Domestic Cattle

Please enjoy this episode focusing on the Aurochs, the fearsome ancestor of the modern domestic cows of Bos taurus and Bos indicus.   / drpolaris   https://www.deviantart.com/drpolaris Sources used for this video: Ajmone-Marsan, P.; Garcia, J.F. & Lenstra, J.A. (2010). "On the origin of cattle: How Aurochs became cattle and colonized the World". Evolutionary Anthropology. 19 (4): 148–157. Arbuckle, B.S.; Price, M.D.; Hongo, H. & Öksüz, B. (2016). "Documenting the initial appearance of domestic cattle in the Eastern Fertile Crescent (northern Iraq and western Iran)". Journal of Archaeological Science. 72: 1–9. Beierkuhnlein, C. (2015). "Bos primigenius in Ancient Egyptian art – historical evidence for the continuity of occurrence and ecology of an extinct key species". Frontiers of Biogeography. 7 (3): 107–118. Bollongino, R.; Burger, J.; Powell, A.; Mashkour, M.; Vigne, J.-D. & Thomas, M. G. (2012). "Modern Taurine Cattle descended from small number of Near-Eastern founders". Molecular Biology and Evolution. 29 (9): 2101–2104. Gravlund, P.; Aaris-Sørensen, K.; Hofreiter, M.; Meyer, M.; Bollback, J.P. & Noe-Nygaard, N (2012). "Ancient DNA extracted from Danish aurochs (Bos primigenius): genetic diversity and preservation". Annals of Anatomy. 194 (1): 103–111. Hall, S.J.G. (2008). "A comparative analysis of the habitat of the extinct aurochs and other prehistoric mammals in Britain". Ecography. 31 (2): 187–190. Hou, Jiawen; Guan, Xiwen; Xia, Xiaoting; Lyu, Yang; Liu, Xin; et al. (15 November 2024). "Evolution and legacy of East Asian aurochs". Science Bulletin. 69 (21): 3425–3433. Martínez-Navarro, B.; Karoui-Yaakoub, N.; Oms, O.; Amri, L.; López-García, J.M.; Zerai, K.; Blain, H.A.; Mtimet, M.S.; Espigares, M.P.; Ali, N.B.H.; Ros-Montoya, S.; Boughdiri, M.; Agustí J.; Khayati-Ammar, H.; Maalaoui K.; El Khir, M.O.; Sala, R.; Othmani, A.; Hawas, R.; Gómez-Merino, G.; Solè, À.; Carbonell, E. & Palmqvist, P. (2014). "The early Middle Pleistocene archeopaleontological site of Wadi Sarrat (Tunisia) and the earliest record of Bos primigenius". Quaternary Science Reviews. 90: 37–46. Mecozzi, B.; Iannucci, A.; Carpentieri, M.; Pineda, A.; Rabinovich, R.; Sardella, R.; Moncel, M.-H. (2024). "Climatic and environmental changes of ~100 thousand years: The mammals from the early Middle Pleistocene sequence of Notarchirico (southern Italy)". PLOS ONE. 19 (10): e0311623. Rivals, F.; Lister, A.M. (2016). "Dietary flexibility and niche partitioning of large herbivores through the Pleistocene of Britain". Quaternary Science Reviews. 146: 116–133. Rossi, C.; Sinding, M.-H.S.; Mullin, V.E.; Scheu, A.; Erven, J.A.M.; Verdugo, M.P.; Daly, K.G.; Ciucani, M.M.; Mattiangeli, V.; Teasdale, M.D.; Diquelou, D.; Manin, A.; Bangsgaard, P.; Collins, M.; Lord, T.C. (2024). "The genomic natural history of the aurochs". Nature. 635 (8037): 136–141. Samartzidou, E.; Pandolfi, L.; Tsoukala, E.; Maniatis, Y. & Stoulos, S. (2021). "Bos primigenius Bojanus, 1827 (Mammalia, Bovidae) in Greece: new finds and a revision of the species, with a comparison with body-size variations of aurochs from the Italian Peninsula". Acta Zoologica Bulgarica. 74: 119–139. Sinding, M.-H. S.; Ciucani, M. M.; Ramos-Madrigal, J.; Carmagnini, A.; Rasmussen, J. A.; Feng, S.; Chen, G.; Vieira, F. G.; Mattiangeli, V.; Ganjoo, R. K.; Larson, G.; Sicheritz-Pontén, T.; Petersen, B.; Frantz, L.; Gilbert, M. T. P. (2021). "Kouprey (Bos sauveli) genomes unveil polytomic origin of wild Asian Bos". iScience. 24 (11): 103226. Turvey, S.T.; Sathe, V.; Crees, J.J.; Jukar, A.M.; Chakraborty, P. & Lister, A.M. (2021). "Late Quaternary megafaunal extinctions in India: How much do we know?". Quaternary Science Reviews. 252: 106740. Van Vuure, T. (2002). "History, morphology and ecology of the Aurochs (Bos primigenius)". Lutra. 45 (1): 1–16. Wang, K.; Lenstra, J.A.; Liu, L.; Hu, Q.; Ma, T.; Qiu, Q. & Liu, J. (2018). "Incomplete lineage sorting rather than hybridization explains the inconsistent phylogeny of the wisent". Communications Biology. 1 (1): 169.