Badlands bighorn

The Badlands bighorn, Ovis canadensis auduboni, also commonly known as Audubon's bighorn sheep, is an extinct subspecies of bighorn sheep of the northern Great Plains in North America. Its existence as a separate subspecies is disputed.

Badlands bighorn
Only known photo of a Badlands bighorn

Extinct  (1926)  (IUCN 3.1)
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Mammalia
Order: Artiodactyla
Family: Bovidae
Subfamily: Caprinae
Genus: Ovis
Species:
O. canadensis
Subspecies:
†O. c. auduboni
Trinomial name
Ovis canadensis auduboni
Merriam, 1901

Former distribution

While the one common name refers to the Badlands region of the Dakotas, it inhabited a larger range that included Montana, Wyoming, Nebraska, South Dakota, and North Dakota.[1]

Some sources assert that the subspecies was hunted to extinction in the early 1900s.[2][3] Others claim that the subspecies persisted as long as 1926.[4]

Biologists Wehausen and Ramey assert that it was not a unique bighorn sheep subspecies but rather a variation of the widespread Rocky Mountain Bighorn (Ovis canadensis canadensis).[5] Some later studies do not support the existence of the Badlands Bighorn as a distinct subspecies.[6]

Rocky Mountain bighorn have replaced the subspecies/variation in its former habitats.[7]

See also
  • Extinct mammals of North America
  • Great Plains−related topics

References
  1. Shackleton, David M. (1997). Wild sheep and goats and their relatives : status survey and conservation action plan for caprinae. IUCN. ISBN 978-2-8317-0353-4.
  2. Krist, John (2004). Voyage of rediscovery: exploring the New West in the footsteps of Lewis & Clark. New York: iUniverse, Inc. ISBN 978-0-595-33591-6.
  3. Les Kaufman; Kenneth Mallory; New England Aquarium Corporation (1993). The Last Extinction. MIT Press. p. 121. ISBN 978-0-262-61089-6.
  4. Stephen Trimble (1988). Words from the Land: Encounters with Natural History Writing. University of Nevada Press. p. 131. ISBN 978-0-87417-264-5.
  5. Wehausen, John D.; Ramey, Rob Roy, II (2000). "Cranial Morphometric and Evolutionary Relationships in the Northern Range of Ovis Canadensis". J Mammal. 81 (1): 145–161. doi:10.1644/1545-1542(2000)081<0145:CMAERI>2.0.CO;2.
  6. French, Brett (2004). "The sheep that will not die". Montana Outdoors.
  7. Wormell, J. Patrick Lewis (2003). Swan song : poems of extinction (1st ed.). Mankato, MN.: Creative Editions. ISBN 978-1-56846-175-5.


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