Ice Age Cave Art Clues

Cave art from the Ice Age has helped solve the mysterious origins of Bison bonasus, Europe’s largest land mammal.

17:23 20 October 2016

Studies of ancient DNA has found that the European bison arose from interbreeding between the extinct steppe bison and the aurochs about 120,000 years ago. The findings were supported by cave paintings that depict features such as humps and horns.

 

Dr Julien Soubrier, from the University of Adelaide, said: "When we asked, French cave researchers told us that there were indeed two distinct forms of bison art in Ice Age caves, and it turns out their ages match those of the different species,"

 

"We'd never have guessed the cave artists had helpfully painted pictures of both species for us."

 

Lead researcher Prof Alan Cooper, director of the Australian Centre for Ancient DNA at the University of Adelaide, added: "We were surprised to find that the DNA we were getting back from these bones didn't look entirely like the modern European bison, they looked quite different,"

 

"We determined that the European bison, bizarrely enough, is a hybrid between an auroch - which is the ancestor of modern cattle - one of the most ferocious wild animals, and a steppe bison, which ranged all the way across the grasslands of Russia, into Alaska and all the way down to Mexico in the Americas."