Alcelaphus buselaphus buselaphus (Bubal Hartebeest)

[sebbe67]

Alcelaphus buselaphus buselaphus

By the start of this century it was only to be found in the southern mountains of Algeria and the Moroccan High Atlas. The large herds found north of the Atlas Mountains a hundred years earlier had vanished, leaving only fond memories in the minds of a few French colonels 'who shot them in the great battles of game, which massacres were organised in the early days of the French occupation'. But there was no lack of hunters to brave the harsh terrain and search out the last survivors. The last reliable report of a Bubal Hartebeest in Algeria was of one shot in 1902, though claims have been made of very much more recent sightings. In Morocco the Bubal Hartebeest was reported from Missour in 1925, but few authorities credited the claim, and the female which died in a Paris Zoo in 1923 is usually held to have been the last of its kind.The Bubal Hartebeest vanished from the Algerian Desert and Moroccan High Atlas Mountains due to hunting.

[another specialist]

www.iucnredlist.org/search/details.php?species=813

[another specialist]

plus off course main page on this site has info........... & photo to

home.hetnet.nl/~harrie.maas/speciesinfo/bubalhartebeest.htm

[Melanie]

[another specialist]

The original page this image was found is this one for reference

www.kbinirsnb.be/cb/antelopes/Other%20Species/page%20other_interesting_species.htm

[djg23]

There is a good photo of a Bubal hartebeest in 'London Zoo from Old Photographs 1852-1914' by John Edwards

[another specialist]

djg23 said:

There is a good photo of a Bubal hartebeest in 'London Zoo from Old Photographs 1852-1914' by John Edwards

London Zoo from Old Photographs 1852-1914
John C. Edwards
Paperback 240 pages (May 1996)
Publisher: J.Edwards
ISBN: 0952709902

Still available from good book suppliers

[Carlos]

I'm not sure if it refers to Holocene or Pleistocene, but curiously, I've just come across a page with information about the results of the excavations at an archaeological site in Wadi Ziqlab, northern Jordan, where, among other herbivores, it is mention the finding of Alcelaphus sp.

The assembly of species mentioned there look quite recent (Holocene) to me.

This is the first time I ever heard of the presence of Alcelaphus out of Africa (perhaps it is just because of my ignorance, but I think it is worth sharing this information for the benefit of others as ignorant as I am).

antiquity.ac.uk/ProjGall/Maher/maher.html

[another specialist]

thanks for sharing the info Carlos

[Carlos]

A possible very late extinction date for that subspecies. Report from an archaeological/paleontological site excavations in Egypt:

IX. Hyæna Den (Lat.25028.06'N; Long 29011.65'E). An abandoned hyæna den was discovered in 1998 by Kleindienst and myself beneath the CSS capof a flat-topped gebel SE within the basin of Palaeolake Balat (Churcher, 1998, Field Report). Part of a day was spent excavating one entrance (of two). The den had been vandalized by tomb robbers whomistook it for a Roman Period tomb. In 1998 bones were seen scattered about the entrance and down the talus slope below, and represented ass, cow, goat, camel and hare, as well as red fox or jackal and fennec,the latter three probably representing denizens after the extirpation of the hyænas. Bone from an undisturbed layer towards the side of the entrance represented cow and ass, but alsoincluded afragmentofa dentary with part of the last lower molar of a hartebeeste. If possible, a radiocarbon date on this fragment would give a date for coexistence of hyæna and hartebeeste. Such a date might be as recent as 1960, and Osborne and Helmy (1980, 428) give a recent record for H. Hyæna at ‘Dakhla Oasis.’ Bones collected in 1998 and examined by A. J. Sutcliffe of the Natural History Museum, London, in March 1998, wereconfirmed as broken by hyæna.

www.arts.monash.edu.au/archaeology/excavations/dakhleh/dakhleh-report-2000.pdf

[another specialist]

Thanks carlos if the radiocarbon dating is correct on the lower molar of a hartebeest that would make it very interesting and make the extinction date much more recent than thought if it belonged to the bubal hartebeest

[Carlos]

An image of a Bubal Hartebeest in a Roman mosaic in the Bardo Museum (Tunis City, Tunisia):

[another specialist]

same with this carlos is it your own image? or was it originally from another site on net?

[Carlos]

Is a fragment of an image of a mosaic from Bardo Museum that I collected time ago from the net.

Nevertheless, I personally have visited the Bardo Museum of archeology at Tunis city several times many years ago, and I have seen there very good images of the north african fauna 2000 years ago among its splendid roman mosaic collection (I think it is the first or second in the world in that matter).

The species represented include many antelopes (including Bubal Hartebeest), wild asses, ostriches, lions, elephants (the best representations of the extinct small north african elephant I know of!!), etc. Some of them of remarkable quality. I think that I took (paper) pictures of some of them that I'm unfortunately unable to locate right now. If I find them I'll scan and post them here.

[another specialist]

thanks Carlos for info - I hope that you do find this photos & keep us informed

[Carlos]

I'm lucky enough to have been given a copy of a very important book on the mammals of Morocco, written by the greatest spanish mammalogist of all times: Angel Cabrera's "Los Mamíferos de Marruecos", published in 1932.

This book cover all living taxa by the time of its publication, including extremely important data on two extinct forms, Alcelaphus buselaphus buselaphus and Panthera leo leo, as well as about other currently endangered ones like Acinonyx jubatus hecki and Panthera pardus panthera.

The book is also a pleasure to read with historical information from many, many sources.

So, I have decided to tanslate the texts on the mentioned species, little by little, as each species is treated really in depth for the benefit of all our community.

So this is the first instalment. I'm starting with the bubal. This is the text of the first two pages, dealing with synonyms and a description of a living individual, as well as references to the type specimen and other published material then available.

Cabrera, A. (1932). Los Mamíferos de Marruecos. Trab. del Mus. Nac. de Cienc. Nat. de Madrid.- Ser. Zool., 57.

p.: 334-336

Alcelaphus buselaphus (Pallas)

_{Antilope buselaphus Pallas, Miscell. Zoolog., 1766, pg. 7.
Antilope bubalis Palas, Spicielg. Zool., fasc. 1, 1767, pg. 12.
Cerophorus [Alcelaphus] bubalis Blainville, Bullet. Soc. Philom., 1816, pg. 75.
Damalis bubalis A. Smith, S.-Afr. Quart- Journ., 11, 1833, pg. 21.
Bubalus mauritanicus Ogillby, Proc. Zool. Soc. London, 1836, pg. 139.
Bubalis mauretanica Sundevall, K. Svenska Vetensk. Hamdl., 1844, (1846), pg. 208.
Alcelaphus bubalis Gray, Catal. UIngul. Brit. Mus., 1852, pg. 123.
Alcelaphus bubale Gerrard, Catal. Bones Brit. Mus., 1862, pg. 243.
Bubalis bubalis Brhem, Thierleb., 111, 1880, pg. 217.
Alcelaphus bubalinus Flower & Lydeker, Introd. Mamm. Liv. And Ext., 1891, pg. 335.
Bubalis buselaphus Sclater & Thomas, Book of Antel., 1, 1894, pg. 7
Boselaphus probubalis Pmel, Carte Géol. Alg., Paléont., Bosél., 1894, pg. 27. Plates IV-X.
Boselaphus saldensis Pomel, loc. cit, 1894, pg. 48, plate V.
Boselaphus ambiguus Pomel, loc. cit.., 1894, pg. 52, plates IV, VI, VIII-X.
Bubalis boselaphus Trouessart, Catal. Mamm., 11, 1899, pg. 905.
Alcelaphus buselaphus buselaphus Ruxton & Schwartz, Proc. Zool. Soc. London, 1929, pg. 575.}

Native names: Bakr el Uahx or Bakr el Jlá.

Description: Fur short and smooth, only a little longer and curly around the preorbital glands, and forming a curly tuft in the middle of the front and above the muzzle. Horns almost touching at the base and gently curved forwards and upwards, forming a lyre or a U, rather, bending a little bit to the front but with the horn-tips turned backwards; protuberant rings all along except for the smooth tips. The colour of the coat is plain tawny to cinnamon, hardly paler at the groins and inside the ears; ear tips darker; tail with a terminal tuft of long sepia hair; horns and hooves blackish brown. No appreciable difference between males and females but for the horn a little thinner and weaker in the later ones.

The following measurements, taken from a living animal and therefore only very approximate, correspond to one of the animals living twenty two years ago at the Jardin des Plantes in Paris, born in France from parents captured in the boundary between Morocco and Algeria: length of head and body, 1750 mm; tail, 350; hind foot including the hooves, 450; ear 160; height at the withers, 1100. It was not possible to obtain the measurements of the horns, but they should have been around 300 mm long. Those of an specimen from Tunisia, owned by Mr. Jeppe, whose photograph has been published by Rowland Ward, measure 350 mm along the anterior curve, 247 of circumference at the base and 235 between the horn tips; those of the species type (the «vache de Barbarie» studied by the Paris academicians) were, following Daubenton, 324 mm long and 203 of circumference; the record length, up to now, is 380 mm.

A female skull measured by Ruxton and Schwarz has 340 mm of basal length, 438 of total length and is 128 mm wide at the posterior rim of the orbits; that of the type measured 423 mm of total length and was 131 mm wide at the orbits.

[another specialist]

Thank you Carlos for firstly sharing the info with all of us plus for spending the time in translating it all

[Melanie]

from the German version of the book "Guarda e scopri gli animali in pericolo" by Rinaldo D'Ami

[another specialist]

I was going to ask Carlos if there is any images in this book?

[Carlos]

Thanks for your kind words, Frank. It is very important to me to share information. It's a question of principle, basic to have a true scientific community. Science is nothing if it is not shared by everybody.

This book has about XXX colour plates and many pencil drawings dealing with identification details. Unfortunately, none of them in the bubal pages.