All we know for certain is that cattle came from aurochs, their larger, fiercer, extinct wild ancestor. In a new study of ancient aurochs genomes published in Nature, Sinding and other researchers ...

Until four hundred years ago, a wild, long-horned ancestor of cattle roamed across much of Europe. The last of these stately creatures - known as aurochs - went extinct in the 1600s. But what if ...

There was thus a greater diversity in the wild forms than we had ever imagined." Intriguingly, climate change also wrote its signature in aurochs' genomes in two ways: First, European and north ...

The last wild aurochs (a female one) died of natural causes in 1627 in Jaktorów Forest. The very last specimen, a farmed one, died in 1755 in Prussia. Today the Last Aurochs Monument in the village of ...

Early humans discovered that using aurochs’ meat, milk, hides and bones greatly benefited their survival. This led to the deliberate breeding of these wild animals for desirable traits such as being ...

After an absence of centuries, a ruminant bred to resemble the extinct wild aurochs has returned in Slovakia. "This is the first individual here," says archaeologist Drahoslav Hulínek. The last ...