The Vig bull and its horns
The Vig bull is one of the two almost complete aurochs skeletons from Zealand, Denmark. It's from the early Holocene and shows several injuries to the bone caused by arrows. The skeleton is likely a male because of its size, robust postcranial skeleton and long skull shape. However, compared to other finds from males like the London skull, the eye sockets are not nearly as prominent and the overall build of the skull not very robust. The horns are not as strongly curved as those of many other aurochs bulls, and also the angle between horns and snout is larger than average (about 80°). On Wikimedia Commons there is a nice photo of the skeleton in frontal view (here). I could not resist to track the skull out with a pencil and do a life reconstruction of the head and horns: Perhaps I made the snout look too feminine for a bull, but the skull is very slender. There is no general rule how much keratine to add to the length and thickness to the horn cores because apparently there was much individual variation in the aurochs.
An interesting question would be: Are there indications that the peculiarities are merely individual characteristics or typical forms in a local population? Similar horn shapes and horn positions are not uncommon in Camargue bulls, for example. There is still a lot of "freehand" speculation about their origin:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.provence7.com/portails/couleurs/provence-noire/taureau/
https://www.cuisinealafrancaise.com/fr/dgal/produits/13-taureau-de-camargue
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The Prejlerup bull is from the same location and age as the Vig bull, thus from the same population, and it has forwards-facing horns and rather prominent eye sockets. So I think the peculiarities of the Vig bull are a characteristic of this particular individual rather an entire population of aurochs.
DeleteJust like humans animals can have deformities, development problems and genetic defects also happen in animals.
ReplyDeleteIt's possible that the individual's testicles didn't descend in the scrotum and prevented hormones to be produced in the quantities needed etc (testicles descend into the scrotum because they need lower optimal temperatures than in the abdomen). Low testosterone could have caused more upright, cow-like horns. It could also have caused the orbital sockets to be less developed, and the muzzle more refined/narrow, as found in cows. One of the most distinct sexual dimorphisms in Chachena/Barrosa cattle is the size of the orbital area. Female Barrosa don't look bulldog faced at all. But males, because of their huge orbital sockets and the tissue around the eyes, look like they have very wide, bulldog faces. In in any bull that has to fight for breeding rights or is used for bull on bull fighting the bone that forms the orbital socket needs to be more massive to house more padding tissue and muscles on the orbits that mitigate direct hits during bull fights.
The vig individual with its indistinct features could have functionally been an oxen or even a hermaphrodite. I wonder whether it had a more cow coloured pelt as well.
That's exactly what I thought, I always suspected the Vig bull is a kind of "natural steer" that got its gonads injured at young age. I also made a blog post were I presented an artwork of the Vig bull in cow colour a while ago, if I remember correctly.
DeleteAs someone who is into both extinct megafauna and cryptids, I am loving your blog. Sorry if this is a dumb question, but is there a way to follow/subscribe for email updates when you have new posts? Thanks, look forward to reading more!
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