The snout of the aurochs

The snout of the aurochs was much longer than in most domestic cattle (shortening of the skull is a typical trait of domestic animals). But this post is not about the length of the snout, but on the actual shape of the snout and nose. 

Literature describes the snout of the aurochs as straight (van Vuure, 2005). And for about half of the skulls I have seen so far this is true. But in the other half of the skulls, the snout looks different. Let us have a look at the male skulls first. While in the Vig specimen and the Sassenberg bull specimen the snout profile is rather straight, in the Baikal specimen, London specimen and Kopenhagen specimen, the nasal bone (the bone at the top of the snout) is actually slightly convex. You see that very clearly in the Baikal specimen. Furthermore, and this is a very interesting detail, the tip of the nasal bone is down-turned in the London specimen, Kopenhagen specimen and the Himmelev specimen, possibly also the Önarp specimen. This has implications for the nasal cartilage and thus the life appearance of the aurochs’ snout and nose. 

In some Lidia bulls, the tip of the snout is down-turned and the nose is rounded. You see that very clearly in this and this bull. The fact that the tip of the nasal bone in a number of aurochs specimen might indicate that those specimen also looked like that in life. You see that in my reconstruction of the Kopenhagen bull that I did recently: 

I am not completely sure about that as it is pretty hard to guess the soft-tissue by the bones only, but it could be that a down-turned snout tip is part of the original aurochs’ genetic diversity. If so, this apparently has been preserved in Lidia, the perhaps least-derived cattle breed on this world. I am not completely sure about that, but it is a possibility how some aurochs may have looked like. 

A convex snout profile is also found in female skulls. While the snout is straight in the Sassenberg cow specimen, the nasal bone of the Cambridge specimen is very convex and down-turned, visible on this photo. I did a life reconstruction based on that photo. Interestingly, the snout appears straight in the life reconstruction once the soft tissue is added.