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THE AUROCHS
Follow the Piper: THE AUROCHS

I thought it was about time for me to write about another ancient, extinct animal, so I chose the aurochs. Most of the cattle breeds we have on our farms today, such as Jerseys, Guernseys, Herefords, and Angus, are descendants of the aurochs, except smaller. Aurochses were really, really big cattle. At the shoulder, they were 6.6 feet tall, and they could weigh as much as 2,200 pounds. Hunting them, back in the days when people mostly used spears and arrows and other such weapons, was scary and dangerous. But whenever the hunters killed an aurochs, they had enough meat to feed the whole village, and maybe their dogs, too.

In Poland there is a group called the Polish Foundation for Recreating the Aurochs, and the scientists in this group want to use DNA from aurochs bones in museums to make a new aurochs. They think they will be able to do this, and when they have made some new aurochses, they can put them back in the forests of Poland, where they used to live.

The Texas Longhorn Genome Decoded
The Texas Longhorn Genome Decoded | News

Among the findings was that Texas Longhorns are direct descendants of the first cattle in the New World, which were brought over by Columbus in 1493. They arrived in the area that would become Texas near the end of the 17th century.....................

Once in the New World, most of the cattle eventually went feral. Under the pressures of natural selection they were able to re-evolve ancient survival traits that had been artificially bred out of their European ancestors. Selection for longer horns allowed them to defend against wild predators. They became leaner and more able to survive heat and drought.

Longhorn Legacy: Surprising Origins of Columbus' Cattle Found
Origins of Columbus' Cattle Revealed | Evolution | LiveScience

The first cows brought to the Americas by explorer Christopher Columbus originated from two extinct wild beasts from India and Europe, a new genetic analysis shows.