It has been two months since my latest post. I didn’t publish any posts in those two months because I was busy doing new aurochs models. I started models of the Sassenberg bull, an Indian aurochs, and the Gramsbergen skull fragment. And last week I finished my model of the Sassenberg bull.
As usual, I started the model by working directly with photos of the original bones/skeletal mounts to achieve maximum accuracy. I know photos of the Sassenberg bull skeleton in lateral view, but the postcranial skeleton of this specimen is partly a composite, and thus not the most reliable options when we have more complete skeletons of a single individual. Therefore, I chose the Store-damme bull skeleton as the basis for the postcranial skeleton. I used a photo from the internet which shows the skeleton in a perfectly lateral view, and “corrected” the inaccurate posture of the mount using GIMP. I manipulated the position of the skeletal elements until an accurately assembled skeleton was the result. Using a different bull for the postcranial body is not a big issue, as there was little to no variation in the postcranial proportions of the aurochs, except for the fact that some had longer spinal processes in the shoulder region than others, but not to a huge extent. For the anatomy of the skull/head, I used a photo of the Sassenberg bull. The most idiosyncratic part of an aurochs were its horns, and I used photos from several different angles in order to correctly replicate the horn cores. Then, after sculpting the body, I sculpted the horn sheath on the horn core. This is necessarily only an approximation, as there was no general rule how much the horn sheaths added to the length and thickness of the horn. For the body morphology, I did not use more or less strongly domesticated cattle breeds as an analogue, but chose Spanish fighting cattle individuals as much as living wild bovines. I did so because the morphology of cattle was greatly affected by domestication, and Lidia cattle are probably the least-derived taurine cattle breed. But there is always some variation concerning the bulkiness of the individual, and it also depends on the individual age. A very old bull, be it Lidia or a wild bovine, is certainly more massive than a very young adult bull. I wanted to reconstruct the Sassenberg bull in its “prime time”, perhaps at the age of around 6 to 7 years in domestic cattle age years. I will do more massive “old” bulls in the future as well.
This is the result:
The model was sculpted from air-drying modelling clay of the DAS brand and was painted with acrylics. It is 33 cm tall at the withers, the scale to an actual aurochs bull depends on which height you choose for that, as the European aurochs varied from 160 to 200 and perhaps more cm at the withers in life. During sculpting my model, I constantly checked its accuracy by superimposing a photo of the model on the “corrected” photo of the actual skeletal mount, and I can happily say that the model lines up perfectly with the skeleton in lateral view. As for the head and horns, here is a photo of the model next to a photo of the Sassenberg mount in exactly the same position:
I am very happy with the result and I think it is quite likely that the model is more or less accurate. More reconstruction models are about to follow, the next one will probably be the Indian aurochs.
Can I ask a question? Could you do a list of extinct megafauna we could Back-breed from extinction?
ReplyDeleteIt is not possible to truly breed back an animal from extinction, as it is impossible to reconstitute the gene pool of the extinct species with its living relatives, even if the genetic material is still present in its present-day relatives it would be tremendously effortful and basically impossible to unite all the necessary alleles by conventional breeding without genome editing.
DeleteGotcha, and other Back-breeding topics is if we were to genetic engineer the steppe bison and aurochs back to life, could we outbreed and hybridize the "aurochs" and "steppe bison" to create more wisent?
Deletehttps://www.carnesmarch.com/es/novedades/67-valoraciones-cruce-retinta-wagyu.html
ReplyDeleteThe 'refined musculature' (want of a better description) of your model is very similar to the Gaur, whereas the wild Water Buffalo, Anoa, Cape Buffalo and Forest Buffalo appear 'chubbier'. I wondered what evidence there is for the Aurochs to have this morphology? Some Lidia cattle are similar though others look as if they have had more of the good life.
ReplyDeleteIt is true that buffaloes look less athletic, I used closer-related bovines as an analogue: gaur, banteng, bison, yak and Lidia. All of them are more muscular. There is no direct evidence for the soft tissue morphology of the aurochs, except for the fact that the shape of the bones suggest a more muscular morphology than that of usual domestic cattle.
DeleteA beautiful model! But the animal would have been a butcher's nightmare with all the weight "thrown forward" into the cheaper cuts of less tender meat in the forequarters. The model beautifully shows how different Aurochs would have been from domestic cattle.
ReplyDeleteTwo months well spent, I'd say. It is a beautiful model and I'm very excited for the others. Although I have to confess my difficulties imagining it as a living, breathing animal. It appears so very slick and front-heavy as to almost resemble some beasty from a fantasy game, designed by the rule of cool. On the other hand I felt a similar disconnect, when I first saw one of the more "ripped" gaur specimens. I guess with paleoart there is also always some residual risk of idealising the animal one is depicting at least to an extend, given the necessity to fill in the gaps. Very interested in your take on older individuals.
ReplyDeleteSeeing the magnificent horns on the model, I remembered some thoughts I had a while ago. In your post on the 2022 trip to the Lippeaue you wrote on the relevance of "lateral horn orientation" an the question of how to fix it. Going further down the Colombian fighting cattle rabbit hole I tried to pin
down the traits that made many of those bulls more interesting to me than Iberian Lidia. I think we already talked about long legs and short rumps
but they often also have relatively long and convex faces and smaller, high hanging scrota.
But one of the most striking differences to standard Lidia is indeed the much better average lateral horn orientation. While Iberian Lidia tend to have a negative (lower than horizontal) orientation and most aurochs-like breeds negative to neutral, Colombian Lidia tend to (seemingly significantly) err on the positive side of the LHO spectrum. I would not be surprised if Guzerat-influence would account for this and I think zebuine
breeds can solve this problem in backbreeding. Kankrej/Guzerat and other zebuin races often have strong positive LHO and thats true for Watusi too, albeit to a lesser degree.
And while I'm on the Watusi topic: Askania Nova has a herd that looks quite a bit different to our standard zoo line. At least one of the cows has a pretty nice primigenius spiral.
Another little observation: The Taurus herd at Hässeler Weiher seems to be perfectly dimorphic in regard to coat colour and consists of some
beautiful animals. Looking at pictures it hit me how a certain degree of homogeneity in appearance might further the "illusion" of and maybe one day even acceptance as wild animals.
I know what you mean concerning the slickness and front-heaviness of the model. But look at bison, particularly the American one, which are very front-heavy as well and their rear and hindlegs looks almost unnaturally underdeveloped compared to the rest. So that doesn't worry me. But I am always unsure how much bulk to add to the trunk, partly also because it is influenced by the individual age of the specimen. The deepness of the ribcage in the model, however, fits the skeleton exactly. I guess aurochs didn't get much bulkier, they certainly looked different from domestic cattle in this regard.
DeleteAlso zunächst einmal freue ich immer über Neuigkeiten in diesem Blog und gratuliere herzlich zu dem neuen Modell! Eine Frage treibt mich aber immer um, nämlich, ob es nicht eine ausgeprägtere Wamme geben müsste. Fast alle Hausrinder und auch viele Wildrinder (z.B. Kouprey) zeigen z.T. mächtige Wammen, die sich aber natürlich nicht im Skelett abzeichnen. Gibt es außer Höhlenmalereien noch andere Hinweise, dass der Auerochse so glatt und wammenlos war?
ReplyDeleteWammenlos war der Auerochse sicher nicht, auch das Modell hat eine (kurze) Wamme. Nicht nur die Höhlenmalereien deuten darauf hin, dass die Wamme kurz war, sondern auch die Tatsache, dass andere Wildrinder die in kälteren Gebieten leben, eine kurze Wamme haben (Yaks, Bisons). Die Wamme hat sicherlich einen thermoregulatorischen Effekt, weshalb es nicht überraschend ist, dass in tropischen Gebieten lebende Wildrinder eine lange Wamme haben und die in kälteren Gebieten eine kurze. Daher ist es aus meiner Sicht ziemlich wahrscheinlich, dass der Europäische Auerochse eine kurze Wamme hatte.
DeleteWould it be OK to ask you to post pictures of this beautiful model seen from above to illustrate the dorsal stripe and musculature. Also interesting would be a tail-on view from behind--a view always taken by farmers and butchers when assessing animals. It does seem inconsiderate to ask for more when your blog already offers so much, but these would be very interesting to see.
ReplyDelete