Ovibos moschatus

• Main Authors: Krakhmalnaya, T. V., Kovalchuk, O. M.
• Format: Other/Unknown Material
• Language: unknown
• Published: 2018
• Subjects: Biodiversity; Taxonomy; Animalia; Chordata; Mammalia; Artiodactyla; Bovidae; Ovibos; Ovibos moschatus; Yana River; muskox; ovibos moschatus
• Online Access: https://zenodo.org/record/6454965; https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.6454965

Ovibos moschatus (Zimmermann, 1780) M a t e r i a l. Skull fragment, Buryn district local history museum. L o c a l i t y a n d g e o l o g i c a l a g e. Chasha River bed alluvium (51°10´N, 33°52´E), near Buryn, Sumy Region, Ukraine; Late Pleistocene. D e s c r i p t i o n. The skull (fig. 2) belongs to a young, probably 4-year-old individual, which is evidenced by the presence of thickened horncores whose bases not yet fused together (according to the scheme in Henrichsen & Grue, 1980). Only cranium cerebrale with unequally preserved horncores is available for the study. Basis cranii as well as occipital part of the skull are completely destroyed; however jugular processes are preserved. Imprint of the brain is well pronounced on the inner surface of calvaria. The skull is dark brown in colour, which is usual for the fossil material that has been in water for a long time. The horncores are wide, compressed dorso-ventrally; they come down almost vertically, slightly deviating laterally in lower part. Their surface is rather loose and bears the traces of exostoses. M e a s u r e m e n t s (according to Walker, 1982). See table 1. C o m p a r i s o n.The muskox skull from Buryn as compared to those of adult individuals of O. moschatus from the Pleistocene (Vangengeim, 1961; Sher, 1971; Krakhmalnaya, 2007 b) is characterized by well-developed cerebral part, high occiput and large foramen magnum. Maximum occipital breadth of the studied specimen is comparable to those in skulls obtained from the Yana River (Tchersky, 1891), Tomsk Region (Shpansky, 2000), and to a lesser extent — to those from Zbranky (Ryziewicz, 1995). These four skulls have the widest occipital region in comparison with others, whose measurements are presented in table 1. According to the minimum occipital breadth, the specimen from Buryn is also similar to those from the Tomsk. 1 Measurements: 1 — skull breadth at the anterior margin level of orbits; 2 — maximum occipital breadth; 3 — minimum occipital breadth; 4 — akrocranium-basion height; ...