Bubal hartebeest

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Bubal hartebeest
A female bubal hartebeest that lived in London Zoo from 4 October 1883 until 27 April 1897. Photographed by Lewis Medland in 1895.

Extinct (1925)  (IUCN 3.1)[1]
Scientific classification Edit this classification
Domain: Eukaryota
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Mammalia
Order: Artiodactyla
Family: Bovidae
Subfamily: Alcelaphinae
Genus: Alcelaphus
Species:
A. buselaphus
Subspecies:
†A. b. buselaphus
Trinomial name
†Alcelaphus buselaphus buselaphus
(Pallas, 1766)
A. b. buselaphus ranged north of the Sahara, from Morocco to Egypt

The bubal hartebeest, also known as northern hartebeest or bubal antelope or simply bubal (Alcelaphus buselaphus buselaphus) is the

Saharan Desert. Other subspecies live currently in grasslands south of the Sahara, from Senegal in the west to Eritrea and Ethiopia in the east and down to central Tanzania. The red hartebeest and Lichtenstein's hartebeest, alternatively considered subspecies or sister species of the common hartebeest, are present in southern Africa.[2][3]

Name

The ancient name for the bubal hartebeest was bubalus (

Dio Cassius, Strabo, Polybius, Diodorus Siculus and Oppian.[4]

Description

Bubal hartebeest in The Book of Antelopes (1894)

The bubal hartebeest was described as uniformly sand colored, save for "an ill-defined patch of greyish on each side of the muzzle above the nostrils", and the terminal tuft of the tail, which was black.[5] In this case the subspecies was similar to the plain colored Lelwel hartebeest, lacking white or black facial markings such as those present in the Western and Swayne's hartebeest. It measured 43 inches at the shoulder and the horns were U-shaped when seen from the front.

Like other hartebeests, the bubal was a social animal.

predator was the Barbary lion, which is now extinct in the wild.[6]

History and extinction

The bubal hartebeest ranged originally across Africa north of the Sahara, from

Tassili mountains of the central Sahara in 1850. However, the identity of the latter animals is debatable. Even if they were indeed hartebeest, they might not belong to the northern subspecies.[9]

The subspecies declined sharply during the course of the 19th century, especially after the

Wahran department in Algeria. The last known herd, numbering only 15 animals, was located near Outat El Haj, Morocco in 1917; all but 3 of them were killed by the same hunter. The last animal in Morocco was shot in Missour in 1925. It probably disappeared around the same time in Algeria. One last specimen is mentioned as having been collected in the 1920s near Geryville, south of the Chott Ech Chergui. While Harper, writing in 1945, considered that the subspecies could still possibly exist at the time in this area, he also mentioned that different campaigns in the 1920s and 1930s failed to find any animals in Morocco, Algeria or Tunisia, even in regions where it had been reported as numerous only a few decades before.[10]

The bubal hartebeest was protected under the London Convention of 1933.[11]

Zoo and museum specimens

1837 illustration

Individuals of bubal hartebeest were sometimes captured and kept in

United States of America.[12]

Relation with ancient civilizations

Remains of bubal hartebeests have been found in several Egyptian archaeological sites such as

baby hartebeest
" also existed:

E9

For these reasons, it has been suggested that the bubal was

Deuteronomy, described as a kosher animal.[citation needed
]

The bubal hartebeest is one of many extinct animals depicted in the Roman mosaics of Hippo Regius (modern Algeria) that date back to the 2nd and 4th centuries AD.[15]

References

  1. doi:10.2305/IUCN.UK.2017-2.RLTS.T813A50181474.en
    . Retrieved 11 November 2021.
  2. ^ "Red Hartebeest (Alcelaphus buselaphus caama) | Wildliferanching.com". Archived from the original on 2016-03-07. Retrieved 2012-08-04.
  3. ^ Kingdon, Jonathan (1997) The Kingdon Field Guide to African Mammals Princeton University Press
  4. ^ Kenneth F. Kitchell Jr., Animals in the Ancient World from A to Z (Routledge, 2014), pp. 18–19.
  5. ^ Cited in Harper (1945) after Sclater and Thomas (1894)
  6. ^ Extinct and vanishing mammals of the Old World (1945) by Harper, Francis, from the Internet Archive retrieved 16:52 30.9.11
  7. ^ Extinct and vanishing mammals of the Old World (1945) by Harper, Francis, from the Internet Archive retrieved 16:52 30.9.11
  8. ^ Tsahar E, Izhaki I, Lev-Yadun S, Bar-Oz G (2009) Distribution and Extinction of Ungulates during the Holocene of the Southern Levant. PLoS ONE 4(4): e5316. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0005316
  9. ^ Extinct and vanishing mammals of the Old World (1945) by Harper, Francis, from the Internet Archive retrieved 16:52 30.9.11
  10. ^ Extinct and vanishing mammals of the Old World (1945) by Harper, Francis, from the Internet Archive retrieved 16:52 30.9.11
  11. ^ Extinct and vanishing mammals of the Old World (1945) by Harper, Francis, from the Internet Archive retrieved 16:52 30.9.11
  12. ^ Extinct and vanishing mammals of the Old World (1945) by Harper, Francis, from the Internet Archive retrieved 16:52 30.9.11
  13. ^ Extinct and vanishing mammals of the Old World (1945) by Harper, Francis, from the Internet Archive retrieved 16:52 30.9.11
  14. ^ .article created by Peter Maas Archived March 11, 2007, at the Wayback Machine retrieved 02:20GMT 30 March 2009
  15. ^ Kádár, Zoltán (1978) Some zoogeographical aspects of the NW vertebrate fauna in historical times: archeological and cultural methods in the research. Vertebr. Hung. XVIII, Budapest.
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