"...Hmmmm...That's funny, Steve...he doesn't LOOK very dead..."

"...That's better...but it's still a cow."

Aaaahhh my friends...but it's not just ANY cow. No sireee...It's the cow...the grandfather of the entire domestic bovine race...Bos primigenius...the Aurochs.

"Whatever."

No, I'm serious!!! It is thought that all domestic dogs can be traced back to wolves that early man kept as pets...right?

"I don't care."

Right. Well, It's the same with cows. The aurochs is thought to be the original wild stock from which all European cattle breeds eventually descended... Hereford... Charlois... Angus... Holstein... you get the picture. (and speaking of pictures...)

The aurochs was the great, black bull that was painted on cave walls alongside bison and mammoths by tacky prehistoric minimalist artists who had no sense whatsoever of modeling or perspective.

In prehistoric times, the aurochs was endemic throughout temperate Europe and Asia. It is known to have been hunted by men from the earliest times with stone age weapons. It is not as well known what part "aurochs tipping" may have had in teenage Neanderthal recreation. Me thinks perhaps not much.

In early historical times, the aurochs played a significant role in the mythologies of many European civilizations.( When Zeus abducted Europa, it was in the guise of an aurochs. ) Julius Caesar wrote of the great black bulls in an account of the Black Forest..."They are but a little less than Elephants in size, and are of the species, color, and form of a bull. Their strength is very great, and also their speed. They spare neither man nor beast that they see. They cannot be brought to endure the sight of men, nor be tamed, even when taken young. The people who take them in pitfalls assiduously destroy them; and young men harden themselves in this labour, and exercise themselves in this kind of chase; and those who have killed a great number - the horns being publicly exhibited in evidence of the fact - obtain great honour. The horns, in amplitude, shape and species, differ much from the horns of our oxen. They are much sought after; and after having been edged with silver at their mouths they are used for drinking vessels at great feasts."

The Europeans had pretty much wiped out the Aurochs by the Middle Ages, and by the year 1300 or so it only survived in East Prussia, Lithuania, and Poland, and would have disappeared completely during this time if it weren't for a royal decree in Poland that protected it under threat of death. It lasted the longest in the Jaktorowski Royal Forest in Mazowsze, where the local villagers acted as gamekeepers. Exempted from taxes, their only required task was to look after the last herd of aurochs, but even this was not enough in the end to save them. In 1564, there were 22 mature cows, 3 young, five calves, and eight bulls. By 1602 there were three males and one female. Eighteen years later there was only the female, who was reported to have died in 1627. For those of you who are frantic for a more complete account of the decline of the aurochs in Poland I have posted a paper written by Mieczyslaw Rokosz that goes in to great detail on the subject. ( You might want to go get yourself a cup of coffee first. )

...so the true aurochs checked out in the renaissance, and that would have ended the story, but in 1920 two brothers, Heinz and Lutz Heck set out to "re-create" the aurochs by back-breeding domestic cattle with aurochs-like qualities. Heinz worked at the Hellabrunn Zoological Gardens in Munich, and Lutz worked in Berlin, starting with slightly different stock but producing similar results. The Berlin breed failed, but the Hellabrunn breed is still around and any "aurochs" you might see in a zoo or on a farm is, most likely, one of these. They have distinctly aurochs-like characteristics, but are a little smaller than those in the fossil record.

But hey, what have we got to lose? Until they come up with some "Jurassic Park" kind of thing, (Paleolithic Park?) that can recreate an animal from a few scraps of bone and horn, the "New Aurochs" is as close as we are going to get.

Other animals have been genetically reconstructed in much the same way as the "New Aurochs". (The Heck brothers also recreated the Tarpan, an extinct horse from Europe thought to be the ancestor of the domestic horse.)

Even if they aren't EXACTLY aurochs, they look cool...I'd eat one.