Hippotragus leucophaeus (Bluebuck)

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Renshaw, Graham. (1904). Natural History Essays. London: Sherratt & Hughes. [pp. 38-58]

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A pair of horns were in the collection of the Australian Museum, Sydney, in 1864:

Krefft, Gerard. (1864). Catalogue of Mammalia in the Collection of the Australian Museum. Sydney: Australian Museum.

EDIT: may be an error since the specimen is not listed in (Rookmaaker, 1992):

Rookmaaker, L. C. (1992). Additions and revisions to the list of specimens of the extinct Blue antelope (Hippotragus leucophaeus). Annals of the South African Museum 102(3): 131-141.

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van Bruggen, A. C. (1959). Illustrated notes on some extinct South African ungulates. South African Journal of Science 55: 197-200.

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Original scientific description:

Pallas, Peter Simon. (1766). Miscellanea zoologica quibus novae imprimis atque obscurae ani­malium species describuntur et observationibus iconibusque illustrantur. The Hague, Netherlands: Petrum van Cleef. i­xii + 1-224 pp., pls. 1-14.

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Grubb, Peter. (2001). Hippotragus Sundevall, 1845 (Mammalia, Artiodactyla): Proposed Conservation. Bulletin of Zoological Nomenclature. 58: 126-132.

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Hempel, Elisabeth et al. (2021). Identifying the true number of specimens of the extinct blue antelope (Hippotragus leucophaeus). Scientific Reports 11: 2100.

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"South Africa suffers a second loss of the blue antelope (Hippotragus leucophaeus) as DNA analysis confirms that the sole specimen held in South African collections is sable (H. niger) material"

sajs.co.za/article/view/9489/16949

[Melanie]

Oldest palaeogenome from the African continent tells of the extinction of the blue antelope
Dr. Gesine Steiner Pressestelle
Museum für Naturkunde - Leibniz-Institut für Evolutions- und Biodiversitätsforschung
An international team of scientists led by the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin and the University of Potsdam generated the first two nuclear genomes of the extinct blue antelope. At 9,950 years, one of the genomes is the oldest sequenced from the African continent to date. The genomic data provide insight into a species' extinction. The blue antelope is the only large African mammal species to have become extinct in historical times. The results of this study published in Molecular Biology and Evolution, show that, despite low population sizes, the blue antelope survived the climatic upheavals of the last 10,000 and more years, until the arrival of European settlers put an end to the species.

The blue antelope (Hippotragus leucophaeus) was an African antelope with a bluish-grey pelt related to the living sable and roan antelopes. The last blue antelope was shot around 1800, only 34 years after it was first described scientifically, making it the only large African mammal species to have become extinct in historical times. A previous study by the same team showed that the blue antelope is one of the scarcest mammal species in historical museum collections globally, and studies to date have only succeeded in recovering relatively small portions of DNA (the mitochondrial genome).

Now, a team of scientists led by the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin and the University of Potsdam succeeded in extracting the first nuclear genomes for this species from one of the rare historical specimens from the Swedish Natural History Museum and a 9,800- to 9,300-year-old fossil tooth from Iziko Museums of South Africa. The fossil genome is now the oldest palaeogenome retrieved from Africa. Prevailing environmental conditions in Africa, namely high temperatures, are detrimental to biomolecule preservation, making the retrieval of ancient DNA exceedingly challenging.

“The genomes show that population sizes of the blue antelope were low since the end of the last ice age around 10,000 years ago and thereby also at the time when European colonists arrived in southern Africa during the 17th century,” explains Elisabeth Hempel, palaeogeneticist at the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin and the University of Potsdam. The fossil record confirms a major decrease in the relative abundance of blue antelope specimens towards the end of the last ice age. “Despite their small range and low population size, blue antelopes survived through the last 10,000 years alongside a long human presence in the region. That is, until the arrival of European colonists and firearms, leading to the end of a species that may have already been struggling due to millenia of habitat loss and range fragmentation”, says Elisabeth Hempel.

The genomic data is freely available.

academic.oup.com/mbe/advance-article/doi/10.1093/molbev/msac241/6794086

Publication: Elisabeth Hempel, Faysal Bibi et al., 2022. Blue turns to grey -–Palaeogenomic insights into the evolutionary history and extinction of the blue antelope (Hippotragus leucophaeus). doi.org/10.1093/molbev/msac241

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"Atlas of Extinct Animals (in Japanese)" by Radek Maly (2022)

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Assessing the identity of rare historical museum specimens of the extinct blue antelope (Hippotragus leucophaeus) using an ancient DNA approach

The blue antelope or bluebuck (Hippotragus leucophaeus) is an extinct species of antelope that lived in South Africa until ca. 1799–1800. Disappearing only 34 years after it was described, it was the first large African mammal species to have become extinct in recent times. Therefore, current scientific knowledge of the blue antelope is limited to museum specimens. However, these are extremely rare and further complicated by uncertainties surrounding their taxonomic status due to morphological similarity with the closely related extant roan antelope (Hippotragus equinus) and sable antelope (Hippotragus niger). A previous study found that only four (out of ten) genetically analysed historical museum specimens could be confirmed as Hippotragus leucophaeus. Here, we analyse a further five potential blue antelope specimens, two of which had been morphologically identified as blue antelope (one from the Natural History Museum (NHM) in London and one from National Museums Scotland in Edinburgh), plus an additional three specimens identified here as candidate blue antelope specimens (from the NHM). We find that only one of the five specimens can be genetically validated as Hippotragus leucophaeus, whereas the other four specimens were identified as H. equinus. Furthermore, using hybridisation capture, we generated two complete mitochondrial genomes for blue antelope specimens that were formerly known only from partial mitochondrial genomes. The diversity analyses including all newly generated genomes further confirm that the mitochondrial nucleotide diversity across this species was low.

doi.org/10.1007/s42991-023-00373-4

[Melanie]

Horns in the Natural History Museum's collection confirmed to be from extinct bluebuck antelope

Once found roaming the very southern edge of the African continent, the bluebuck antelope was hunted to extinction just 34 years after it was first scientifically described.

Within that tiny window of time, only four confirmed historical specimens were known to have made it into museums around the world. Now researchers have validated another, a pair of horns in the Natural History Museum’s collections.

The bluebuck or blue antelope was the first large African mammal to go extinct in recent times.

Once found living in the grasslands along the southern coast of South Africa, it was driven to extinction by humans in around 1800. While closely related to two surviving antelopes, the sable and roan, the bluebuck was distinct having split from a last common ancestor some 1.5 million years ago.

As the name suggests, the bluebuck had a predominantly blue-grey coat that faded to a whitish colour on its belly. On its head it had white patches in front of its eyes, and a pair of large, ridged horns that swept back in an elegant curve. While these horns were typically smaller than those found on its relatives, they still reached a respectable length of about 50 centimetres.

But the likely scarcity of the bluebuck by the time Europeans first encountered it, and the speed at which it was made extinct, means that there are astonishingly few specimens of this antelope in museums around the world. Now a new study has used genetics to confirm that a pair of horns in the Natural History Museum’s collection is from the unfortunate species, bringing the total number of confirmed bluebuck specimens globally to five.


www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/news/2023/september/horns-in-museum-collection-from-extinct-bluebuck-antelope.html

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Hempel, Elisabeth, Faith, J. Tyler, Preick, Michaela et al. (2024). Colonial-driven extinction of the blue antelope despite genomic adaptation to low population size. Current Biology. doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2024.03.051

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Mammals collected and illustrated by the Baudin Expedition to Australia and Timor (1800-1804): A review of the current taxonomy of specimens in the Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle and the illustrations in the Muséum d’Histoire naturelle du Havre.

The expedition commanded by the Frenchman Nicolas Thomas Baudin aboard the ships Le Géographe and Le Naturaliste (and Le Casuarina for the return journey) to the southern hemisphere between 1800-1804 collected specimens from numerous locations including the Canary Islands (Tenerife), Île de France (Mauritius), Cape Town (South Africa), Australia and Timor. Additionally, specimens were donated or purchased from locations not visited including the Comoros, Madagascar and Sumatra. Unfortunately, Baudin died at Île de France on the return trip so the responsibility of the account of the voyage was given to other members of the expedition. Responsibility for writing up the primary account of the voyage was granted to François Péron, who published the first volume of the narrative of the Voyage de Découvertes aux Terres Australes in 1807. Following his death in 1810, the second volume of the narrative was completed by Louis de Freycinet and published in 1816. The other four volumes of the Voyage included three atlases (the first by expedition artists Charles-Alexandre Lesueur and Nicolas-Martin Petit in 1807 and the second and third by Freycinet in 1811 and 1812), and a volume entitled Navigation et Géographie by Freycinet in 1815. Based on recent and on-going research, a review of many of the original documents is presented here, revealing hitherto unpublished details about who collected and donated mammals to the expedition. Research was conducted mainly in the collections of the Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle (MNHN) in Paris and their associated acquisition books. The Baudin expedition was responsible for an unprecedented collection of over 100 000 specimens of natural history, which remains the single largest collection of natural history specimens from Australia. A total of 101 mammal taxa relating to the Baudin expedition were identified during this study, which included 51 species described as a result of the expedition and 50 species that were described either before or subsequently, but not associated with the expedition. Of the taxa described, 20 species and three subspecies are currently recognised valid. During this study 43 museum specimens that were referable to 29 taxa were identified and at least five specimens seem to have been misplaced based on the information available. These specimens were derived from 24 holotypes, four paratypes, three syntypes, five lectotypes, and six paralectotypes and one topotype that are currently held at the MNHN. Some of these specimens are part of the estimated 51 mammals that were brought back alive to France on the boats. Charles-Alexandre Lesueur’s illustrations complemented this study; of the 177 that are held at the Muséum d’Histoire naturelle du Havre, 149 could be attributed to one or more species and 28 were of unidentified species.

sciencepress.mnhn.fr/en/periodiques/zoosystema/43/21