The mammoth steppe stretched from the British Isles in the west across the dry North Sea, Europe, vast parts of Asia, and the dry Bering Sea and Bering Strait to North America in the east. This cold, dry, and nearly treeless grassland was the domain of large grazers.

In addition to woolly mammoths and woolly rhinoceroses, wild horses, steppe bison, and aurochs thrived here in great numbers. The steppe bison, a true grazer, was a herd animal. Hundreds of thousands of skeletal remains have been found. These bones indicate that the shoulder height of these bovines exceeded two meters, almost as tall as a small woolly mammoth.

• Wild Horses – Equus caballus LINNAEUS, 1758
• Steppe Bison – Bison priscus BOJANUS, 1827
• Aurochs – Bos primigenius BOJANUS, 1827

The Aurochs
Bos primigenius BOJANUS, 1827

In addition to large grazers like horses, rhinoceroses, and steppe bison, a very large bovine also roamed our regions: the aurochs. The aurochs, also known as the urus, was much rarer than the steppe bison. Both were about the same size. The aurochs, the ancestor of today’s cattle, which we see grazing in fields and producing milk, could easily reach a shoulder height of over two meters.

Here, a complete skull of an aurochs from the Late Pleistocene is displayed alongside a skull of a modern cow, Bos taurus LINNAEUS, 1758.