Alcelaphus buselaphus buselaphus (Bubal Hartebeest)

[Carlos]

bucardo said:

Oh, they are not bones? Only pictures?

The 4th silhouette may be an oryx too, in my opinion,

Well. It may be so. We will never know for sure.

But figure 4 still has an Ibex feelling to me.

Just to check it, I draw the silouhettes of an Oryx dammah and of a Capra nubiana and then put them together with the two prehistoric images from Sluguilla Lawaj site:

To me, figure 8 is definitely a scimitar oryx as the authors of the article state.

But figure 4 shows a short, compact neck and the head profile has the shorter, isosceles triangle shaped profile you find in an ibex. The back line is straight and lacks the slight oryx hump on the shoulder. And finally, the horns are represented by three lines, two parallel in the foreground and a third in the background, my guess is that the two first parallel lines are the schematic representation of the thick profile of an ibex horn, and the background line could suggest the second horn, partially hidden from the observer by the first one.

My opinion is that it shows an Ibex. We are getting a little apart from the bubal topic of this thread, but I find this little question fascinating.

Wath do you think?

[another specialist]

peej2 said:

Does that link hold any images? Or what exactly is that site about? I think the above image is of an impala or some lechwe maybe, not a hartebeest

that was the label the taxidermys used on all his specimens but on this website it mentions he had stuffed a bubal hartebeest but shame it doesn't show it.

[another specialist]

Carlos i agree with you on you opinions.

[Carlos]

Thanks for sharing my opinion. The question is that, if there were indeed ibexes in North Western Africa, so far from todays populations, then, which species/subspecies were they?

I think this is an unanswerable question without fossil evidence to confirm it. So we have to wait and see.

[Peter]

Here a free article from the Royal Society about the Hartebeest, including the Bubal Hartebeest. Maybe you need to register first to access it, but that is free too. Old articles there can be downloaded free, new ones only paid.

www.journals.royalsoc.ac.uk/media/hhwx2pyvrlcttekged4t/contributions/2/4/e/n/24enj62g2cya5ha7.pdf

and
www.journals.royalsoc.ac.uk/link.asp?id=24enj62g2cya5ha7

Environmental change and rates of evolution: the phylogeographic pattern within the hartebeest complex as related to climatic variation

[another specialist]

Thanks Peter i'll have a look later - may be worth registering and see what else there is to find.

[Bucardo]

carlos said:

Wath do you think?

Yes, there are good reasons. I agree with you.

[another specialist]

carlos said:

Thanks for sharing my opinion. The question is that, if there were indeed ibexes in North Western Africa, so far from todays populations, then, which species/subspecies were they?

I think this is an unanswerable question without fossil evidence to confirm it. So we have to wait and see.

we have to remember that there was possible land links to Africa to the Europe. so ibex may of inhabited a vast area in the past and what we have today is the remnants of this super species which later evolved into what we know today.

[Carlos]

An intriguing theory.

To my knowledge the last direct land connection between Europe and North Africa was during the Messinian crisis (5,9 to 5,3 million years ago) and I think that it was a little to much time for the case you refer of a Capra super-species ancestral to modern ibexes.

I find it most likely for them to share the same origin as the rest of the Palearctic elements of the North African mastofauna, that were mixed there with a fabulous array of typically ethiopian mammals.

I mind that the Ibex, (if ever existed), should have had the same origin as Atlas Bear, Wild Boar, Aurochs, Wild Horse, Barbary Deer, etc which most likely got there through the Sinai bridge from Eurasia.

One interesting fact is that the Lammergeier had its former World distribution, before the recent range contraction, concurrent with the former range of wild goats of the genus Capra (except for the Drakensberg isolated population in South Africa and the Atlas Mts).

So it fits well to have had a presently extinct wild goat population in the Maghreb mountain ranges, where the bearded vulture still clings to life (just a very few pairs at present).

[another specialist]

very interesting Carlos - who knows time may tell plus if we ever find the fossil finds to back the existence this would clarify this little mystery.

[Bucardo]

Yes, both wild goats and lammergeiers probably had an asiatic origin.

[another specialist]

bucardo said:

Yes, both wild goats and lammergeiers probably had an asiatic origin.

Yes, i would agree both probably had an Asiatic origin like many other animals just like the atlas bear for Africa and European brown bears for Europe etc etc

[Bucardo]

From Catalogue des mammiferes sauvages du Maroc (“Catalogue of the wild mammals of Morocco”).
Stéphane Aulagner & Michel Thevenot. Travaux de L’Institut Scientifique, 1986

Alcelaphus buselaphus (Pallas, 1766) Hartebeest

*The individuals of North Africa belong to the type subspecies A. b. buselaphus (Pallas, 1766)
incl. boselaphus Trouessart, 1898 and bubalis Pallas, 1767.
-(Bubalis buselaphus)
(…)
Well known by the ancients (Herodotus, Pliny, …), the Hartebeest is one species distributed across all savannahs of Africa. Still abundant at the time of first explorations of the Maghreb, it knew a fast extinction in XIX century. In northern Morocco, the last remain specimens were killed in 1925-1926 on the high plateaus of the East and the Moulouya Valley (BEDE 1926, PANOUSE 1957). In Western Sahara, its disappearing is more recent, date back to the years 1950 according to HALTENORTH and DILLER (1980), although MORALES AGACINO (1949) didn’t mention it in its regional wildlife.

The hartebeest is a social animal that lived in Morocco in herds in plains or hills rich in shrub vegetation. Its disappearing, accelerate by the hunting, was followed by little the one of his principal predator: the lion.

[another specialist]

thanks for sharing us this information Bucardo

[another specialist]

Distribution map

www.zi.ku.dk/evolbiology/courses/ME05_kol1/alcepaper.pdf

[sebbe67]

i51.photobucket.com/albums/f388/Papuan/bulbal_edited.jpg

image a little bit to large to be uploaded here

The Doomsday book

[another specialist]

here is a compressed version i have of same image sebbe67 mentioned above

[vsa01]

My rendition of the Bubal Hartebeest. Only seems to be the single photograph in circulation on the internet, so it references that, images descriptions from this thread and pictures of Hartebeest. Perhaps the color is a little far off? although it is so hard to tell.

Jon

[another specialist]

Nice pic.

Keep up the good work.

[Bhagatí]

from
s152.photobucket.com/albums/s191/baghira_album/Mammalia/?action=view¤t=AlcelaphusbuselaphusbuselaphusBrehm.jpg