European water buffalo
| European water buffalo | ||||||||||||
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Skull of a European water buffalo in the State Museum for Natural History Stuttgart . |
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| Temporal occurrence | ||||||||||||
| Pleistocene to? early holocene | ||||||||||||
| 0.126 million years to around 10,000 years | ||||||||||||
| Systematics | ||||||||||||
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| Scientific name | ||||||||||||
| Bubalus murrensis | ||||||||||||
| ( Berckhemer , 1927) |
The European Water Buffalo ( Bubalus murrensis ) was in the warm periods of the Pleistocene in Europe occurring kinds of Bovidae ( Bovidae ) from the kind of Asian buffalo ( Bubalus ). This species was related to the water buffalo ( Bubalus arnee ) and the tamarau ( Bubalus mindorensis ), recent representatives of the genus Bubalus . The species epithet points to the evidence of the water buffalo near the Murr .
morphology
Since the postcranium is difficult to distinguish morphologically from the other two cattle genera occurring in Pleistocene Europe , Bos and bison , Bubalus murrensis is mainly assigned to remains of the skull. From them it can be deduced that the European water buffalo differed from its Asian counterpart in particular in the shape and position of the horns . In the European species, they had a more triangular cross-section and were more crescent-like directed backwards, and the occiput protruded well beyond the horns. In the Pleistocene of China there were Bubalus species that were closer to B. murrensis than to the water buffalo ( B. arnee ).
Distribution and habitat
The European water buffalo was a typical animal of the interglacial fauna in Europe. This species is mainly documented from the sites in Germany and the Netherlands assigned to the Eem warm period . A number of finds are known, especially from the Rhine Valley . Cautiously, sparse finds from the Neolithic from Donnerskirchen ( Austria ) were assigned to the genus Bubalus . The European water buffalo has not yet been detected in the area of the former USSR , only a dubious horn cone of a possible water buffalo is known from the Taman peninsula .
The European water buffalo most likely preferred the proximity of large rivers and made similar habitat and climatic requirements with mild winters as the hippopotamus , which is also recorded in the Rhine valley of the Eem period. The warm-time fauna complex also included the European forest elephant , the forest rhinoceros and steppe rhinoceros , the aurochs and other species. The evidence of forest-dwelling species such as the dormouse in addition to bio-indicators for open landscapes, such as European hamsters or wild horses , suggest a mosaic of alternating forest zones and open areas.
European water buffalo were exposed to native predators such as the cave lion , brown bear and wolf in their time .
die out
Bubalus murrensis disappeared during the Quaternary extinction wave in the late Pleistocene or early Holocene . Due to the sparse fossil documentation of this species, it is not known whether it served humans as game or not.
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b Wighart von Koenigswald: Lebendige Eiszeit. Climate and fauna in transition. Stuttgart, 2002
- ↑ a b Wighart von Koenigswald: Exotics in the large animal fauna of the last interglacial of Central Europe. Eiszeitalter und Gegenwart 41, 1991, pp. 70-84.
- ↑ a b Diana Pushkina: The pleistocene easternmost distribution in Eurasia of the species associated with the Eemian Palaeoloxodon antiquus assemblage. Mammal Review 37 (3), 2007, pp. 224-245
- ^ H. Dietrich Schreiber: Finds of Bubalus murrensis from the Upper Rhine Valley. Abstracts of the 18th International Senckenberg Conference April 25-30, 2004 in Weimar
- ↑ Erich Pucher: First record of the European wild ass (Equus hydruntinus, Regalia, 1907) in the Holocene of Austria. 1991.
- ↑ a b Theis van Kolschoten: The Eemian mammal fauna of central Europe. Geologie en Mijnbouw (Netherlands Journal of Geosciences) 79 (2/3), 2000, pp. 269-281.
