Cave Cow?: Parabos tigneresi

Publication Info:

Transcript:

Leonardo Sorbelli et al, First of a line or last of a dynasty? Parabos tigneresi and the evolution of eurasian bovinae in the early pliocene, PLOS One (2026). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0340256

Like with a lot of domestic animals, bovine taxonomy is a mess, thankfully new research is working on cleaning that up by clarifying the position of Parabos tigneresi (previously Alephis tigneresi) in the bovine family tree. 🐄🦬🐃🪏These massive herbivores have been ruling our planet's landscapes for over 4 million years!

Episode 289

Notes:

So I know you've heard about cave men, cave lions, cave bears. What about cave cows? Here's the most recent paleontology news almost daily or whenever I get around to it. Okay, so this one might be a little complicated cuz the term cow can really just mean the full-grown adult female of a large mammal with the term large being kind of ambiguous. But most of the time we think about cows, we're thinking about the domestic species Bos taurus or bovine. But bovine is kind of an issue too because it refers to animals within the subtribe Bovina, which is within the subfamily Bovinae, which includes domestic cattle, buffalo, and the thing a lot of us call buffalo that aren't really buffalo, the bison, which it's sometimes acceptable to call buffalo. And the buffalo, which aren't a buffalo but it's okay to call a buffalo, could also be seen as a part of the same species as Bos taurus because they can interbreed and that gets into issues with the whole species terminology, but that is a far larger topic that I'm not getting into today. Anyway, meet Parabos tigneresi. Parabos is not a new genus, originally named in 1832. And tigneresi isn't necessarily a new species either, being named as a part of a Leptobos in 1991. You get the idea, Bovinae is a mess. But luckily, some new researchers working on cleaning that up at least a little bit. Cuz thanks to these 14 amazingly preserved specimens from early Pliocene Catalonia, researchers are reanalyzing the relationships between Leptobos and Parabos and have determined that these thousand-pound plus bovines, obviously not as large as a modern bovines but still huge, were either very early stem Bovinae or some of the last surviving members of the Miocene Tragoportacini radiation. So these fossils alone may not help solve all of the issues within bovine evolution, but they are amazing specimens, one of the early giant relatives of the modern animal we call a cow, and will hopefully help things clear up a little. As usual, if you want more information, here's the source.