Cave Art Reveals 'Bizarre' Hybrid: the Higgs Bison

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>Researchers have identified a previously unknown hybrid species of bison and cattle, with the help of cave drawings dating to at least 12,000 years ago.

>Nicknamed the Higgs Bison (a play on the physics term Higgs boson) because of its once mysterious, elusive past, DNA analysis has verified the existence of the hybrid.

>A new study published in the journal Nature Communications describes how the animal originated more than 120,000 years ago through the hybridization of the extinct Aurochs, the ancestor of modern cattle, and the Ice Age Steppe bison, which ranged across the cold grasslands from Europe to Mexico.

>Higgs Bison eventually became the ancestor of the modern European bison, also called the wisent.

>Study co-author Alan Cooper, director of the University of Adelaide's Australian Center for Ancient DNA, said that the Auruchs and the Ice Age Steppe bison were "doing things they are not meant to be doing together and producing a completely new species that survived, which is bizarre because normally that's not meant to happen in mammals."

>Lead author Julien Soubrier, also from the University of Adelaide, told Seeker that while hybridization or interbreeding between closely related mammals is not uncommon, usually the resulting hybrids are either quickly reintegrated within one of the parents' species or the hybrids simply disappear due to low fertility.

>"What is most surprising in the case of the wisent," he added, "is that the hybrid form not only survived for more than 100,000 years, but potentially out-competed its parent species in some particular environments by better adapting to some of the extreme climate variations at the time."
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