In order to reconstruct environments associated with Plio-Pleistocene hominins in southern Africa, researchers frequently rely upon the animals associated with the hominins, in particular, animals in the Family Bovidae. Bovids in southern Africa are typically identified by their teeth. However, identifying the taxon of a bovid tooth is challenging due to various biasing factors. Furthermore, in...

Yak, a species of bovid uniquely adapted to high-altitude environments, plays critical role in the life inhabitants Tibetan Plateau and neighboring areas. There is currently no consensus on when these animals may have been domesticated. In this paper, we review archaeological, genetic, linguistic evidence relevant question, suggest that domestication took place following hybridization with taur...

We describe here a new species of the bovid Criotherium, from the late Miocene of Bulgaria. The genus was previously known to definitely occur only in Samos (Greece) and Kemiklitepe (Western Turkey), with the single species C. argalioides. The new species, C. nikolovi, is more primitive than the latter, although both are probably contemporaneous, suggesting the occurrence of two lineages in the...

The sequence of the ribonuclease from the ancestor of swamp buffalo, river buffalo, and ox, corresponding approximately to Pachyporrux lutidem, an extinct ruminant known from the fossil record, has been reconstructed using the rule of ‘maximum parsimony’. This protein and two sequences that may have been intermediates in the evolution of modern ribonuclease have been constructed in the laborato...