geekhyena:

paleoillustration:

Aurochs illustrated by phan-tom:

“In case anyone is wondering what an Aurochs is, it’s the wild ancestor of modern day cattle. They went extinct in 1627.

I was reading about them on the internet a few years ago and one of the things I was surprised by is they were actually larger than almost all domestic cattle breeds. They came close to six feet at the shoulder.

There was a theory that the Aurochs could be selectively bred back into existence, since their genes are still in the domestic cattle, and a couple of German zoo keepers tried it back in the 1930’s 1940’s. They declared success after 12 years, but the animals didn’t have the height, and the horns weren’t pointed forward like an aurochs, along with a few other traits that were missing. People are still breeding, what became known as Heck cattle, today trying to come closer to the appearance of the aurochs. The tallest one so far is five foot three at the shoulder.

In January I read that a group of scientist in Holland were going to try the breeding back experiment again, but this time they have a map. A genome map to be exact. Maybe they’ll succeed this time.”

TED conference about bringing back extinct species

Myu!