Aurochs anatomy revisited

In the latest post, I reviewed much of the ancient and historical aurochs depictions and what they tell us.

Here are some conclusions in this regard:

 

A shoulder hump present and visible, more so bulls than in cows but present in both sexes, but not nearly as prominent as in bison – this is also in line with the fact that the shoulder spines are not as high in the aurochs as in bison.

The dewlap likely had almost a gap in the throat region, similar to what we see in banteng.

The pelvis was probably slanted to some degree; we see this also in other wild bovines and this is likely basal for Bos.

Adult bulls probably made a massive and somewhat hefty impression as they are often portrayed in that fashion. Likely there was no edge between the neck and the hump in bulls in the “default position” of the neck.

 

With this information, I attempted some new reconstructions, also trying to avoid my common mistakes I tend to make when I reconstruct the aurochs.

 

Most puzzling to me is the length and shape of the trunk. Let us look at the length first.

When I do my reconstructions, I always consider the cartilage between the leg elements that is missing in the skeletons. This makes the legs longer in life than what they appear in the skeleton. There were of course also the intervertebral discs between the vertebrae, which I also considered but assumed that most mounts take them into account. Looking at dissected cattle, I think, however, that some skeletal mounts might underestimate the amount of cartilage between the vertebrae. This means that the ratio between shoulder height and trunk length was certainly not exactly as in the skeletons. The exact ratio in life is, however, hard to determine without accessing the skeleton directly. Some guesswork is involved, and this is where aurochs depictions can be helpful. Not in detail, but they do transport the overall impression the animals must have made. And if the artwork is bulky, the animal certainly was not gracile.

There is also one sentence in Schneeberger’s report from Jaktorow that provides a clue. He writes that bulls were not as long as the cows, which is the only written account of the body morphology of the aurochs that I am aware of. The fact that he wrote cows being “not as long as the bulls” could indicate that he found the bulls to be somewhat longish. But not necessarily. However, the way the remark is put is interesting.

 

The same goes for the shape of the trunk. With the exception of the Siga verde bull engraving, none of them show bulls with an overly slender waist as in young fighting bulls.

 

Putting the evidence together, I made three sketches based on three different approaches.

This one is based on the photo of a Holstein bull. I manipulated the proportions of the bull on the photo in order to make it fit the Store-damme skeleton:

 

This one is based on the Torsac-dirac skeleton, using ancient depictions such as the one from the Romito cave, Siga verde or Dordogne as a guidance:

 

The last one is based on the Store-damme skeleton:

 

 

While the results are not all too different from each other, I think the lower sketch is the most plausible one, it resembles the Lascaux cave paintings quite well while also matching the anatomy of extant wild bovines. It also resembles the reconstruction of the Sassenberg bull by Tom Hammond in overall morphology. If two artists come to the same result with different skeletons and methods, we might be on the right track.