Myotragus balearicus
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Extinct (3000 BC)
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| Myotragus balearicus (Bate, 1909) |
The Balearic Islands Cave Goat Myotragus balearicus (Greek-derived Neo-Latin: μυς + τράγος + Βαλεαρίδες — "Balearian mouse-goat") is the scientific name of a species of the subfamily Caprinae which lived in the islands of Majorca and Minorca until its extinction around 5000 years ago. This animal was previously described as an 'odd goat,' but since the genetic analyses done at the University of Pompeu Fabra of Barcelona, it seems that the Myotragus was more closely related to sheep than to goats.
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[edit] Description
What first strikes the attention of this animal is its head. Its eyes were not directed towards the sides, as it happens in nearly all the herbivorous mammals, but towards the front, granting them a stereoscopic vision (with all probability, their vision was their main sense). The lower jaw rarely contained two perennial-growth incisors in the lower jaw, like rodents and lagomorphs, but not other ungulates. The upper jaw lacked incisors. The rest of teeth were molars and premolars adapted to the crushing of vegetal matter. The nose was short in comparison with the rest of the skull, giving him slight similarity with rabbits and hares. Finally, both sexes displayed at the top of the head two very short horns, although they might just as well have had short bone-base, but long horn covers. No complete horns have been found.
The Myotragus balearicus was quite small in size (standing about 50 centimetres high at the shoulder) and weighed between 50 and 70 kilograms. The legs were proportionally shorter than in other related and less flexible bovids, which did not make them exceptionally fast. This was not a serious problem because on the islands there were no predators except for some birds of prey, from which they probably hid in the vegetation. On the shoulders they had a pronounced hump, whereas the back was bent in the back quarters. The legs, like many from the artiodactyla order, had four fingers of which only two were used to walk. The tail was rather long in comparison to the rest of the body.
[edit] Feeding
The fossil remains of Myotragus balearicus seem to indicate that this animal was a browser, like the present goats. It fed on all kinds of shrub vegetation and low branches of the trees of the Mediterranean climate, although it had a special predilection to endemic Balearic shrubs. The deposits of Majorca and Minorca, as well as the absence of grazing animals, seem to indicate that the primitive Balearic island were covered by forests before the human colonisation and that herbaceous grassland of appreciable size did not exist. In this habitat, the Myotragus would move around preferably solitarily or in small groups.
[edit] Reproduction
Not much is known about the reproductive habits of this species. In 1999 the skeleton of a newly born individual was found near Manacor in the northeast of Majorca. It was found that the baby Myotragus was quite large in proportion to the size of the mother, and probably it could walk and follow its progenitor around soon after being born. It seems that it did not take a long time maturing, perhaps only a year or two.
The fact that the species conserved the horns is a possible indication that the males used them to fight for their right to reproduce, but the lack of sexual dimorphism invites one to think this species was not polygamous or, at least, the males did not build "harems". Given the little length of the horns, in combats, such as there may have been, the contenders had to punch more towards the flanks (as it happens in many small antelopes) than to fight head against head (typical of ungulates of great size).
The Mediterranean climate is seasonal, thus it is thought that Myotragus had an annual mating season, but it is not known in what part of the year this occurred. It is thought that the seasonal differences, especially in rainfall, were somewhat less pronounced during the animal's existence than they are today, and that the period of gestation cannot be deduced with certainty.
[edit] Origins
The unique characters of Myotragus balearicus are a consequence of a prolonged process of evolution on the islands, it is a clear example of island dwarfing. In this type of isolation, the ungulates tend to become smaller while rodents and lagomorphs, increase their size, as it happened to the Hypnomys, the giant dormouse that shared habitat with Myotragus and they also tend to lose the fear reaction towards predators if none occurred on the islands. A clear example of this is the loss of capacity of the legs to run at high speed, the stereoscopic vision which is useful to calculate distances, but not so to discover predators on the lookout and the proportional reduction of the brain, something which has also been observed in the Homo floresiensis, a newly discovered dwarf-like human species on the island of Flores, Indonesia.
The analyses of DNA and the oldest fossils (Pliocene 5.7 million years ago) of the island of Majorca (Myotragus pepgonellae) indicate that Myotragus balearicus, in spite of being a browsing animal, descended originally from grazers. The closest related species to Myotragus are ovine like the extinct Nesogoral of the Plio-Pleistocene of Sardinia, the old Gallogoral of France (possible mainland ancestor of both the Myotragus and Nesogoral), Ovis (present sheep and mouflon) and the mountain goats of Central Asia. The last common ancestor common to the Myotragus and Nesogoral arrived at Majorca and Sardinia around 6 million years ago, a time at which the Straits of Gibraltar were closed and the Mediterranean Sea was a small collection of salty lakes. Later on, the opening of the Straits and the massive salt water inflow isolated the animal populations, which diversified in the new Mediterranean islands created by tectonic forces. Paralleling, climatic change replaced the vegetation of subtropical type with the present one of Mediterranean type, forcing the Myotragus to develop drastic changes in its feeding and set of teeth.
Strangely, Myotragus only colonized initially the island of Majorca. On Ibiza a strange fauna without terrestrial mammals developed, where birds and bats were the main vertebrates, whereas in Minorca a giant rabbit evolved that covered the same niche that the Myotragus in Majorca. With the level of the sea falling in the Glacial Era, Majorca and Minorca were united and Myotragus replaced the great Minorcan lagomorphs. Both islands separated again at the beginning of the Holocene.
[edit] Extinction
Diverse datings indicate that the three native terrestrial mammals of Majorca (Myotragus, Hypnomys and the giant shrew Nesiosites) disappeared all in the same very short period of time, during the third millennium BC.
During years of continued discussion between scientists, some said the extinction was caused by climate change, others maintained they were exterminated by the first human settlers of the Balearic Islands. Some evidence could support both opinions; due to that, this question is still not answered unequivocally.
The dominant theory is the one that aims at an extinction by human causes. Traditional methods had dated the first human colonization of Balearic towards 5000 BC or even before, but the revision of the deposits with modern methods of dating indicates clearly that there was no human presence before 3000 BC, thus the first Balearics would be the creators of the pre-talayotic culture (3000-1400 BC). The date is, of course, highly suspicious, because it agrees very closely with the fast decline of the three forms.
The first Balearic settlers had a Neolithic culture, although they continued living in caves which are plentiful on the islands. In these there has been found enormous amounts of bony remains of animals, especially Myotragus, with evidence of carving and denting by humans. Most surprising is that not all Myotragus arrived dead at the caves, but that there are indications that many of them were kept alive for some time there, and also many of them had the horns trimmed and healed later: A clear indication that they were being object on an attempt of domestication. The reason for this failure to domesticate it is that probably the Myotragus did not reproduce in captivity or not at a suitable speed, because only remains of adult individuals have been found.
Human hunting, the failure of domestication, the introduction of domestic animals like goats (that competed with Myotragus for the same food), cows, pigs and sheep (and consequently, the destruction of the forests to create places for them to pasture) and dogs (which could have preyed on the Myotragus) were the probable causes of the extinction of this animal.
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- Universitat de les Illes Balears Myotragus: de "oveja" a "cabra" a causa del clima y la insularidad (PDF format) in Spanish.
[edit] External links
