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clive
- Grazalema
Fascinating article in El Pais English edition.
The entire Gulf of Cádiz was already known to have been a refuge for the megafauna that were contemporaries of Neanderthals. In Huelva, the same team has discovered traces of Palaeoloxodon antiquus, straight-tusked elephants similar to the current-day ones, but up to four meters (13ft) tall, wild boars (Sus scrofa scrofa) that tripled the size of those that exist today and weighed up to 300 kilos (660lb), giant red deer, wolves and other animals.
The Cape Trafalgar footprints also show giant aurochs, with tracks made by hooves up to 27 cm (11 inches) long. As Neto De Carvalho explains, “the rounded footprints of a current adult bull rarely exceed 10 centimeters.” He adds, “We had the experience in Matalascañas of measuring the footprints of Cariñoso, a bull weighing 1,128 kg (2,487 lb), and they did not exceed 18 cm (7 in). The Cape Trafalgar aurochs would have measured more than two meters in height from the head (6 ft 5 in), not counting the horns, which are known to reach 80 cm (31 in), and weighed around 1,500 kg (3,300 lb). The females were smaller and showed a strong sexual dimorphism [variation in appearance between the two sexes], which also seems to be present when we compare the auroch footprints in the new paleontological site of Cape Trafalgar with those of Matalascañas.”
Take a trip on the Wildside!
https://wildsideholidays.co.uk (Wildlife and nature holidays in Spain)
https://grazalemaguide.com/ (All my web projects in one portal and everything you need to know about Grazalema)
Miguel
- Cádiz
You can read more about aurochs here: https://rewildingeurope.com/rewilding-in-action/wildlife-comeback/tauros/
The rewilding Europe project has located DNA in ancient cattle breeds that directly descend from aurochs….!!!!
Linda Mary Olivine
Intriguing article! I think I’d have missed those Neanderthal underprints!
Lots more pictures in the original, open access, paper in Nature:
Rachel
Thanks for the link Linda!! Really interesting…. I wish more people would come and join in here. Great information but it’s very quiet with everybody yapping away over on facebook. At least I know here that later on I can come back and easily find a conversation….. 🙂
It would be great to see more people here, I guess FB is just so quick and easy? I had to go and find my log in details for this forum before I could post that link.
Same problem with geology groups I admin – people will chat on FB but not on forums like this
clive
- Grazalema
But you can save you login details on your mobile or whatever and the cookie last for 30 days… renewing another 30 every time you visit here…. 🙂 Basically the same as facebook etc….
I’m off next week down to the coast to see these footprints!!!!!! 🙂
Take a trip on the Wildside!
https://wildsideholidays.co.uk (Wildlife and nature holidays in Spain)
https://grazalemaguide.com/ (All my web projects in one portal and everything you need to know about Grazalema)
Yes, I do save! Should obviously look in more often.
Have a good trip to the coast, remember camping at Trafalgar, such beautiful clear blue sea
Rachel
They now reckon that the prints at matalacañas are 300,000 years old………
https://www.larazon.es/andalucia/huelva/20220930/jjyjmy4rnzdptekx73s47hvdou.html
Las últimas investigaciones desarrolladas en torno al yacimiento litoral efímero descubierto en junio de 2020 en la playa de Matalascañas, en Almonte (Huelva), en el que se localizaron las pisadas más antiguas del Pleistoceno Superior de todo el mundo, han aumentado la antigüedad del mismo a casi 300.000 años.
Rachel
Another great article on the Atlas Obscura website about the projects working on recovering the auroch: https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/aurochs-rewilding
I never knew about this!!!!!! Fascinating stuff!
When the Swedish armies descended upon Poland in 1655, they laid waste to the kingdom and pillaged whatever they could. Among the spoils stolen from the city of Jaktorów was one of King Sigismund III’s most prized possessions: an ornate drinking horn, longer than a grown man’s arm and as thick as an elephant tusk. Although the artistry was exquisite, the horn’s true value had little to do with the metal wrapped around its circumference. In life, the horn had belonged to the last aurochs bull, who died in 1621.
Today, the horn, which resides in Stockholm’s Royal Armoury, is one of the few surviving remnants of the wild cattle that roamed Eurasia and North Africa for more than 250,000 years. Like so many of Europe’s megafauna, the aurochs met their end at the hands of humans. Their horns were such coveted hunting trophies that by the Middle Ages, their numbers had already fallen. The species officially went extinct in 1627, when the last cow died in Poland.
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