Uncertain aspects of the aurochs' live appearance
M ost of the external and morphological traits of the aurochs are well known to us thanks to numerous superb skeletal remains and also contemporaneous artworks and written sources. While the skeletal material is complete, well-preserved and numerous enough to give us a very precise picture of the aurochs’ morphology, its dimorphism in sex and also, to a certain degree, variation along time and region, artistic impressions and written accounts are sometimes not comprehensive or unambiguous enough to clear all open questions. Do not get me wrong, the picture of the aurochs we have is very precise. But there are some aspects that are questionable and still leave some room for speculation. In this post I give you overview over all those points that come to my mind. The length of the dewlap It is unquestionable that the aurochs had a dewlap of a certain size. Tropical bovines tend to have a large one (banteng, gaur, kouprey), more northern ones not so much (bison). Zebuine cattle have a lar...