A comparative analysis of the habitat of the extinct aurochs and other prehistoric mammals in Britain

Abstract

The present study tests the hypothesis that the habitat of the globally extinct aurochs (Bos primigenius L.) was primarily riverine flat-lands. Landscape features in Britain were analyzed for sites with Late Pleistocene and postglacial finds of aurochs (n=188), and, for comparison, wolf (101), brown bear (96), red deer (73), beaver (68), roe deer (46) and elk (23). Find sites were defined as Ordnance Survey 1 km map squares containing 1 or more finds. For each, spot height above sea level, heights of contour lines, flatness of terrain, total length of watercourses, and presence of woods, rock and water features were noted. Comparisons of find sites among species (Kruskal-Wallis test) show significant differences that accord with knowledge of present-day habitat preferences at the landscape level. Considering the species separately each find site was then compared with a randomly selected control map square within 10 km. Compared with their respective control squares, find sites of beaver have, today, a stronger association with presence of lakes; those of brown bear and wolf with presence of cliffs and rock outcrops; and those of aurochs with absence of woodland and with lower elevation and greater flatness. The concordance of these findings with the present-day habitats of the extant species suggests valid inferences can be made about the habitat preference of the extinct aurochs. On this basis the aurochs appears, as hypothesized, to have selected low-lying, flat ground, which (indicated by its present-day use for purposes other than woodland) was relatively fertile

Patterns of diet and body mass of large ungulates from the Pleistocene of Western Europe, and their relation to vegetation

“…Bos primigenius has both a limited environmental range and a very similar mesowear signal in all localities, indicating a quite stable mixedfeeding dietary preference. This finding is in agreement with earlier studies that suggest, based on pollen, insects, historical descriptions and landscape analysis, that B. primigenius mostly utilised particular kinds of marshy woodland environments (such as sedge marshes in riverine floodplains), which would have provided relatively constant resources (van Vuure, 2005;Hall, 2008).…”

Adapt or die—Response of large herbivores to environmental changes in Europe during the Holocene

“…Such a pattern, already documented in red deer (Cervus elaphus; Drucker et al, 2003;Drucker et al, 2008), is consistent with the changes in the forest cover as a result of vegetation succession in Europe in the Early Holocene, but it is not compatible with the reduction of the forest cover as a result of agricultural activities following the Neolithic and subsequent periods (Woodbridge, Fyfe, Roberts, Mazier, & Davis, 2018). Thus, aurochs and European bison, preadapted to open or mixed habitats Hall, 2008), became classical refugee species sensu Kerley et al (2012) after that were introduced mainly to forests . This has continued through the last 2,000 years bp, when the scale of forest reduction was the largest (Kaplan et al, 2009).…”

The Prey Pathway: A Regional History of Cattle (Bos taurus) and Pig (Sus scrofa) Domestication in the Northern Jordan Valley, Israel

“…This change occurred when the first plant agriculturalists in the Neolithic of the southern Levant increased their settlement of alluvial settings, which are favorable for plant cultivation in terms of water and soil availability, as part of the great shift towards agricultural economy [3]. Expansion into alluvial habitats and their agricultural modification resulted in hunting pressure on ungulate taxa that thrived in alluvial fans—wild cattle [48] and wild boar [49]. Susceptibility to overhunting was possibly the result of higher encounter rates caused by co-habitation and of crop-raiding [20], [50].…”