Posted on 12/04/2009 7:02:39 PM PST by SunkenCiv
Machine operator John Rutherford is used to digging objects out of the ground, but he was shocked when he came face-to-face with an 8,000-year-old beast. For the Thompsons of Prudhoe employee has unearthed a complete auroch's skull -- a species of large wild cow that became extinct in Britain during the Bronze Age... The quarry is located on land, owned by Nunwick Estates, on a bend in the North Tyne river. The skull has been identified by a Durham University expert as a large elderly male auroch, which was possibly cast out of its herd before dying in secluded wetland. It has been radiocarbon dated by a research team in Glasgow to 5670-5520 BC and is therefore of the late Mesolithic period, which started at the end of the last Ice Age... One of two red deer antlers found in the same area has also been dated to the sixth millennium BC.
(Excerpt) Read more at hexham-courant.co.uk ...
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Wild Cow
Were there North American wild cattle? Where did the longhorns of Texas found to be running wild by the earliest Spanish and Anglo settlers come from?
I wonder if it is possible for any of its DNA to be intact within its teeth.
I hope they give it a try, at least.
North American wild cattle were called bison. :’)
Aurochs were the ancestors to domesticated cattle (at least in part), and the Texas longhorns are just a breed where that atavistic characteristic was brought out.
......the Texas longhorns are just a breed where that atavistic characteristic was brought out ......
I have been reading about Texas. One of the reasons for coming was the free cattle. Apparently even the earliest Franciscan monks around San Antonio captured the wild longhorns. The Tennesseeans and Kaintucks did the same elsewhere
That is, the cattle apparently preceded the people. I know about the Bison but wonder about where the long horns came from. You would have me believe that they are European in origin and wandered up from Mexico where the old characteristics were selected to allow them to live wild.
That is logical
http://www.doublehelixranch.com/FAQ.html
[snip] Unlike most breeds of cattle, no one set out to develop Texas Longhorn cattle as a breed. Instead, they evolved in North America from descendants of cattle brought into the Americas by the Spanish in the late 1400s and early 1500s (the first cattle were brought into Hispaniola in 1493). However, the cattle did not descend directly from Spanish stock. Rather, the first cattle to be imported by the early Spanish explorers were from the Canary Islands. These cattle, in turn, were imported from Portugal, and the closest relatives of Texas Longhorns among existing European breeds are Portuguese cattle breeds (such as the Alentejana and Mertolenga). These early imports of Iberian cattle from the Canary Islands soon became feral in northern Mexico (which included lands that became the Republic of Texas in 1836, and part of the United States in 1845). These wild herds underwent intense natural selection; the only cattle that could survive were highly disease resistant, could live on harsh range conditions (through droughts, floods, heat, and cold), and could defend themselves and their calves against predators. [unsnip]
Actually from what I understand the was a species of wild cattle on the North American continent during the Ice Age. Big suckers too from what I know, with big horns. I think the texas Long Horn is a decsendant of it.
The Franciscans settled in SA around 1700.
Various Spanish explorers and traders had been traveling through Texas for over 150 years at that point. All had cattle with them and it’s not unreasonable to suspect that some of the cows wandered off and went feral.
Horses arrived the same way, as did feral pigs.
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