sutton026

A bout three weeks ago, I presented a recent drawing I did of Europe's megaherbivore fauna of the Holocene. I promised that I am going to present the aurochs of the drawing on a separate, refined version which is what I am going to do today. I do that because I think it is one of the most accurate aurochs artworks I did recently.  It is not a reconstruction that is based on an actual skeleton, but it is based on such reconstructions. Actually, the basis for the drawing were the bull reconstructions that I did in June 2017. I did them by tracking out mounted skeletons (I corrected anatomical flaws in the mounts at first) to assure maximum precision:  For my recent life illustration, I used the Vig bull and Kopenhagen bull (c and d) as a model, and decided to do it in a running pose. Here is the result (I decided to watermark it as I repeatedly made the experience that my drawings have been used without permission and crediting, which is not pleasant):  While body shape an...

I have several posts in preparation at the moment, but for today, I have a short post. It is about a Heck bull I found recently on the web, and I think he is interesting for a number of reasons. It is or was (the article is from 2014, so I do not know if it is up to date) the breeding bull of a herd at Lembruch, Germany, owned by the breeder Martin Kockmeyer. At first I want to present some photos of the bull (photos owned by the Presse-Bild-Agentur Nokem Martin Kemper, I got them from this article):  First of all, the upper two photos show nicely how Heck cattle is a mosaic of its founding breeds: the body and skull shape of a Highland bull (not desirable from an "aurochs point of view"), the colour of a Werdenfelser or Corsican bull, the horns very reminiscent of Watussi.  Secondly, the bull's name is "Arak", thus I suspect he might be from the Wörth lineage , which is/was remarkable for being the only closed breeding line within Heck cattle and having estab...

I n my 2017 wild horse summary I had a look at what the evidence suggests regarding the life appearance, extinction and population genetics of European wild horses. There are some open questions, but also some things that we can say with certainty. One of those things is that European wild horses are as extinct as the aurochs. Nevertheless, there are three horse breeds that are often referred to either as surviving wild horses or near-wild horses, having a special status among European horses in being particularly close to the original wild form. Those three breeds are the Polish Konik, the English Exmoor pony and the Portuguese Sorraia, and each one of those has its own proposed background story that is supposed to link them closely to European wild horses. Those stories, however, are only purported and believed by advocates of those breeds, people involved in various projects, and are spread exclusively in non-scientific text books, public relations articles, or on signs in ...

C laus Kropp from the Auerrind project recently published a post on the use of Watussi in the project on the Auerrind blog, including a recent photo of Thando and his half-Maremmana offspring.  Thando (©www.auerrind.wordpress.com) Apollo (© www.auerrind.wordpress.com) Ambra (© www.auerrind.wordpress.com) I think that Apollo might approach the age of reaching its final colour, but it is obvious that he is darker in colour than its halfblood sister. This is likely mostly due to its Maremmana ancestry, but sometimes also Watussi cattle show a tendency of sexual dichromatism. The zebuine hump seems to be either lacking or very weakly developed yet, but this is irrelevant as those individuals are F1. Surely the hump might or might not reappear in future cross individuals, depending on coincidence. One always has to pick the right individuals once the genes become split up and distributed among the offspring. Regarding the colour, I think this combination bears the potential for very da...

I recently did another drawing showing Holocene Europe’s megaherbivores of the nemoral mixed-forest zonobiome, drawn to same scale. It shows, from left to right: fallow deer, Dama dama ; wild boar, Sus scrofa ; red deer, Cervus elaphus ; elk, Alces alces ; roe deer, Capreolus capreolus ; aurochs, Bos primigenius primigenius ; wisent, Bison bonasus ; European wild horse, Equus ferus ferus . I know of course that wild boar are actually omnivores. One might ask why I included fallow deer, as it was introduced in historical times just like the mufflon. In contrast to the mufflon it has a Pleistocene interglacial record in Central Europe, which is why I included it here. The question is whether Dama dama would have recolonized Europe without human influence. In order to answer the inevitable question “but where are elephants and rhinoceroses?”, my drawing intends to illustrate only those herbivores which had a solid presence in Holocene Europe. It is not known for certain that th...

I t has been long ago that I posted something extensive on wild horses here on my blog, which is why I decided to do a summary of all my past posts on the biology of western Eurasian wild horses. I have been digging through a lot of literature since 2013 and am also going to add some new information. I hope you find useful. Definition & population genetics At first I want to define what kind of wild horses I have been focusing on. As long as we regard Przewalski’s horses as members of the same species as domestic horses, Equus ferus , which is what I do, this species is composed of two major clades: one leading to the Przewalski’s horse, Equus ferus przewalskii , and one leading to domestic horses including their wild progenitors, Equus ferus ferus (= Equus ferus caballus ). Genetics suggest a separation of both lineages between 160.000 [1] and 38-72.000 years [2]. On my blog, I have been focusing on these extinct wild horses that spread from Iberia to the Eurasian steppe and were...