Let's see what the research says!
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.12.01.569562v1.full.pdf
reserved at the Velký Mamuťák rockOK Not wild Bison so we'll skip that one...
shelter, in northern Bohemia (Czech Republic), which has been a forested enclave since the
early Holocene. We find that domesticated animals, their associated microbiomes, and plants
potentially gathered for fodder, have clear representation by the Late Neolithic, around 6.0 kyr BP, and persist throughout the Bronze Age into recent times. We identify a change in dominant grazing species from sheep to pigs in the Bronze Age (~4.1 – 3.0 kyr BP)
Early cave art and ancient DNA record the origin of European bison. Nature Communications, 7, 13158.
the European bison (or wisent, Bison bonasus) before the Holocene (<11.7 thousand years ago (kya)) remains a mystery. We use complete ancient mitochondrial genomes and genome-wide nuclear DNA surveys to reveal that the wisent is the product of hybridization between the extinct steppe bison (Bison priscus) and ancestors of modern cattle (aurochs, Bos primigenius) before 120 kya, and contains up to 10% aurochs genomic ancestry. Although undetected within the fossil record, ancestors of the wisent have alternated ecological dominance with steppe bison in association with major environmental shifts since at least 55 kya. Early cave artists recorded distinct morphological forms consistent with these replacement events, around the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM, ∼21–18 kya)
OK that's getting close.
wisent mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) indicates a closer relationship with cattle. This suggests some form of introgression from cattle or a related Bos species10,11,12, potentially associated with the recent extreme bottleneck event.
Very fascinating indeed!!
820 depictions displaying bison individuals (∼21% of known cave ornamentation13). The diversity of bison representations has been explained as putative cultural and individual variations of style through time, since the steppe bison was assumed to be the only bison present in Late Paleolithic Europe14,15,16. However, two distinct morphological forms of bison (Fig. 1, Supplementary Information section) are clearly apparent in cave art: a long-horned form similar to modern American bison (which are thought to be descended from steppe bison), with very robust forequarters and oblique dorsal line, and a second form with thinner double-curved horns, smaller hump and more balanced body proportions, similar to wisent.
I had no idea that -- ok American Bison... but what about cattle?
we inferred that the divergence between CladeX and modern wisent lineages occurred ∼120 (92–152) kya, likely during the last (Eemian) interglacial. Both these mitochondrial clades are more closely related to cattle than to bison, suggesting that they are descended from an ancient hybridization event that took place >120 kya (presumably between steppe bison and an ancestral form of aurochs, from which the mitochondrial lineage was acquired).
ok....
European Bison (Bison bonasus) populations changed their ecology from a grazing diet in open landscapes toward a mixed-feeding behavior in more forested refugial habitats during the Holocene (11.7 ka cal. BP—present) as a response to human landscape transformations [6–9].
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0278395
preyed Cervus elaphus, Rangifer tarandus and Bos/Bison from Combe-Grenal, that reflects ungulate dietary preferences shortly before their death, support the fact that these animals were, at the time when they were killed, occupying an open, tundra-like habitat. Despite evidence for climatic and environmental changes in the vicinity of the site from MIS 5 to MIS 3, dental textures show relatively little variation through time. This apparent discrepancy between environmental changes and the feeding ecology of these dietary plastic ungulates highlights the continuous preference of Combe-Grenal Neanderthals for hunting in open landscapes, and the persistence of grassland areas in Combe-Grenal vicinity that were sufficiently extensive to constitute the principal hunting ground for Neanderthal hunters all along the sequence.
Wow - so Neanderthals preferred colder tundra for hunting habitat! That explains why the warming of the Holocene was to their disadvantage.
the only one in Poland, with a 300,000-year-long sequence of uninterrupted sediments, that cover the time span from before the Saalian to the Holocene (Röpersdorf-Schöningen (Lublinian) Interglacial and Saalian Glacial (Krzna Glacial – Holocene) (MIS 7/8-1). The excavations yielded about 200,000 animal bones and more than 4,000 stone, bone and antler artefacts.Animal remains collected in Biśnik Cave represent more than 160 taxa. One representative of Erinaceomorpha was found in the Middle Pleistocene layers. Among Soricomorpha, 10 species were found in the Middle Pleistocene sediments, whereas 11 species were recorded in the Upper Pleistocene and Holocene (Socha, 2009) deposits.
Bovid remains were present in all the layers except layer 20. Bison priscus Bojanus, [Steppe Bison] 1827 was the dominant representative of the bovids. Remains of Bos primigenius Bojanus, [Auroch] 1827, which was rare during the Holocene, were found in layer 15
Probably the spread of Bison priscus took place during the Middle Pleistocene. The species was adapted to various environments, which favoured its wide distribution. However, the steppe bison preferred open tundra steppe (MacPhee, 1999).
the wisent (also called the European bison), Bison bonasus (Linnaeus, 1758)—has always been of interest to zoologists and paleontologists. Active research in this area dates back to the beginning of the last century (Flerov, 1979; Grange et al., 2018; Hilzheimer, 1918; Massilani et al., 2016; Palacio et al., 2017; Pucek, 1986; Soubrier et al., 2016; Spassov, 2016; Spassov & Stoytchev, 2003). The species had a wide historic geographic distribution throughout the European continent during the middle and late Holocene, ranging from France in the west to the Caucasus in the east, as demonstrated by studies using morphological methods, rock engravings analyses, and modern techniques for ancient DNA (aDNA). According to some conclusions, the European bison emerged for the first time after the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM, approximately 15,000 years ago) from a refuge in the South Caucasus and then spread into Central and West Europe at the onset of the Holocene (Massilani et al., 2016). This suggestion is based on circumstance since no genotypes of Bison bonasus have been found in ancient European samples before this period. However, other genetic and rock engraving studies suggest a much earlier time of arrival in Europe (11.7 kya) (Grange et al., 2018; Spassov & Stoytchev, 2003).
The results clustered with the sequences from the extinct Holocene South-Eastern (Balkan) wisent to the fossil Alpine population from France, Austria, and Switzerland, but not with those from the recent Central European (North Sea) one and the now extinct Caucasian population.
surviving into the 20th century only in northern-central Europe and the northern Caucasus Mountains...Compared to the extant lowland wisent, the Caucasian bison was more adapted to mountainous habitat....to only 50 by 1921.[5] Local poaching continued; finally, in 1927, the last three Caucasian wisent were killed.
wild and tragic!
wisent groups (branches). The first one, named Bb2/1, which is found in the North Sea and the Caucasian region, includes wisents inhabiting today mainly plain forests in Russia, Poland, and Georgia (Grange et al., 2018; Massilani et al., 2016; Soubrier et al., 2016; Wecek et al., 2016). It is important from a taxonomic viewpoint to note that the described Holocene Central European wisent B. bonasus hungarorum Kretzoi (Flerov, 1979) is closer to the steppe form from the forests of Poland and represents not more than an isolate of this lineage.
https://www.mdpi.com/2073-4425/13/10/1684
Our new findings indicate that the genetic diversity of Pleistocene bison was probably even higher than previously thought and that northeastern Chinese populations of several mammalian species, including Pleistocene bison, were genetically distinct.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/geb.13601
We showed that simulating the ecological pathway to extinction for steppe bison in Siberia in the early Holocene required very specific ecological niche constraints, demographic processes and a constrained synergy of climate and human hunting dynamics during the Pleistocene–Holocene transition.
Aim
To determine the ecological processes and drivers of range collapse, population decline and eventual extinction of the steppe bison in Eurasia.
climatic change and hunting by humans are likely to have interacted with key ecological processes to cause the extinction of the steppe bison in its last refuge in Eurasia.
steppe bison was a strict grazer that did not migrate seasonally (Julien et al., 2012). Here, they competed with the European bison (Bison bonasus) for ecological dominance until climate-induced vegetation change following the Last Glacial Maximum [LGM; a period from 26.5 to 19 kyr bp (Clark et al., 2009)] restricted the less ecologically flexible steppe bison to Siberia (Soubrier et al., 2016).
this looks to be the key article.
the range of the steppe bison in Siberia contracted in a north-easterly direction until 33 kyr bp, when the range fragmented into smaller populations (Figure 2). This fragmentation continued through the Pleistocene–Holocene transition, resulting in only refugial populations in north-eastern Siberia from 11 kyr bp (Supporting Information Movie S1). The time of extinction in Siberia was simulated to occur at 7.4 kyr bp (±1.5 kyr bp), based on the ABC-weighted average of the best 100 process-explicit models. The oldest end of the window of uncertainty in our simulated estimate of time of extinction overlapped with the time of extinction based on the fossil record (8.81–8.66 kyr bp; see Materials and Methods). The youngest end overlapped with independent environmental DNA evidence of prolonged persistence of steppe bison in north-eastern Siberia, with the youngest inference of occurrence being at 6.4 ± 0.6 kyr bp (Wang et al., 2021). This ensemble of “best models” projected the last surviving population to be in the east Siberian highlands, occurring c. 500 km from the last known fossil, located at Batagaika in the Lena River valley (Murton et al., 2017).
Counterfactual scenarios confirmed that human hunting and climatic change were both pivotal long-term drivers of regional extinction for the steppe bison in Siberia and, most probably, Eurasia more generally.
human hunting was a crucial and chronic driver of extinction of steppe bison in Siberia. Without hunting by humans, steppe bison maintained a wider distribution and larger population size and did not go extinct by 5 kyr bp (the end of the simulation). Instead, bison persisted in two small subpopulations in the far north of Siberia with suitable climatic conditions.
https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.1098/rspb.2023.1095
Millennial processes of population decline,
range contraction and near extinction of
the European bison
Human activities prevented populations of
European bison from rebounding in the Holocene, despite improved environ-
mental conditions. Hunting caused range loss in the north and east of its
distribution, while land use change was responsible for losses in the west
and south. Advances in hunting technologies from 1500 CE were needed to
simulate low abundances observed in 1870 CE. While our findings show
that humans were an important driver of the extinction of the European
bison in the wild, vast areas of its range vanished during the Pleistocene–
Holocene transition because of post-glacial environmental change.
Hunting pressure on European bison increased greatly after
1500 CE, due to technological advancements in hunting and cul-
tural shifts in land use [58], including establishment of royal
hunting reserves [51]. To address this, we ran scenarios of increased
hunting from 1500 CE to 1870 CE with harvest rates increasing at
10% intervals from 10 to 100% of pre-1500 CE maximum hunting
rate. We validated the final abundance in 1870 against a historical
estimate of 3560 European bison, with 2000 bison in the Caucasus
[51] and 1560 bison in Białowieża Forest [3].
the
European bison show that by the mid-Holocene it had con-
tracted its range to central and eastern Europe and the
Caucasus, going extinct in southern Europe at approximately
11 ka BP, and in Western Europe at approximately 7 ka BP
During the early deglaciation (21–18 ka BP), European bison
were distributed in disjunct metapopulations in Siberia,
the Caucasus, southern Europe and western Europe. From
18 ka BP, metapopulations in western and southern Europe
started to slowly move eastward and northward, merging
together some 6000 years later (electronic supplementary
material, movie S1). By 12 ka BP, the only remaining
European bison in Western Asia were in the refugium in
the Caucasus. The Siberian metapopulation declined in size
from 13 ka BP, going regionally extinct at 8 ka BP. By 1500
CE (or 450 BP), the European bison was restricted to north-
eastern Europe and a small refugium in the Caucasus,
attaining highest abundances in the Caucasus and in what
is now Poland and Ukraine (figure 2).
During the Holocene, hunting caused range loss in the north and east of
the European bison distribution, while change in land use
was responsible for losses in the west and south.
We show that environmental change in the
late Pleistocene caused the range of the European bison to
shift from a fragmented periphery to a centralized core popu-
lation in Europe where human abundances in Eurasia were
generally highest [40].
Here, European bison were hunted
for food and skins [62], and for noble prestige from the late
medieval period [63]. Reconciling inferences of demographic
change from the extensive fossil record of European bison
required process-explicit models to have a medium level of
sustained hunting by humans (5–21% maximum harvest
rate for European bison). These rates align with isotopic
evidence from human fossils from Europe during the late
Pleistocene, which suggest that 10% of average protein
intake came from bovines (aurochs and European bison)
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