Related Biomes
Tundra Muskox
Tundra Muskox, Ovibos Moschatus
The extant Tundra muskox is one of the few large mammals in North America that did not go extinct during the terminal Pleistocene. Currently, these animals can be found in Greenland or the islands of the Arctic Archipelago in northern Canada, and they are actively being reintroduced to other regions, such as Alaska. New research has demonstrated that modern muskox populations are much less genetically diverse than those that lived during the last Ice Age, suggesting that these animals suffered similar population losses as other species during the terminal Pleistocene (Campos et al. 2010; MacPhee and Greenwood 2007).
Muskox. Credit: U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, By Tim Bowman.
Height: 130 cm (4 ft) at shoulder
Weight: 200-410 kg (440-900 lbs)
Physical Description:
The extant muskox is noted for its thick, shaggy coat of fur and stocky build. This animal's coat is 3-4 inches thick and consists of long, coarse outer hairs, called guard hairs, over a thick, soft undercoat that provides extra insulation in the winter. The undercoat falls out as the temperatures rise at the end of winter. These animals have short, broad heads, short necks, and a characteristic shoulder hump just behind the neck. Both males and females have broad, flat, curved horns that lie close to the skull, and in males, the horns meet across the forehead in a massive, well-developed boss or protruberance.
Extant muskoxen are adapted to the frozen arctic and prefer dry, cold, continental climates with shallow or patchy snow cover. Each muskox herd has a home range that includes water and food, and they will roam within that range. During the last glacial maximum these animals found the open tundra then present in portions of the Midwest very hospitable.
Muskoxen are herbivores who will eat whatever vegetation they can find in the arctic, including roots, mosses, and lichens in winter, as well as flowers, grasses, sedges and willow shoots in summer. Willow is reportedly a favored food in early summer, when it is most easily digested, although it is utilized year round (Gunn and Adamczewski 2003). They have adapted to the variable quantity and quality of available plants in their environment by maintaining a slow metabolism and the ability to digest low-quality forage.
Muskoxen live in large herds of two to three dozen animals. When threatened, the herd will form a defensive ring that places calves in the middle and adults along the outside, facing outwards towards their foes. This strategy works well against wolves, bears, and other predators, who cannot penetrate the ring, but is not very effective against human hunters, who can slaughter the entire herd from a distance.
During the Wisconsin glacial period, Ovibos inhabited the tundra and arctic steppe regions of Alaska, Canada and the northern U.S. They have been recovered from as far south as the Saltville locality in western Virginia.
Although muskoxen survived the widespread environmental changes of the terminal Pleistocene, their range became much more restricted.
Ovibos remains have been recovered from several Wisconsinan sites in the Midwest, including the Hill Top Ridge site and Jinks Hollow site in central Illinois, Big Bone Lick in northern Kentucky, the Youngstown muskox from eastern Ohio, and the First American Bank site in northern Tennessee. Few midwestern Ovibos remains have been dated, however, a tundra muskox skull from the Wabash River valley in eastern Illinois has been radiocarbon dated to ~24,000 years ago.
- The name "muskox" comes from the strong, musky odor that the males produce to attract females during the mating season.
- It has been estimated that the force of a male muskox hitting head-on is equivalent to a car driving into a concrete wall at 17 mph.
Campos, P., Willerslev, E., Sher, A., Orlando, L., Axelsson, E., Tikhonov, A., Aaris-Sørensen, K., Greenwood, A., Kahlke, R. Kosintsev, P., Krakhmalnaya, T., Kuznetsova, T., Lemey, P., MacPhee, R., Norris, C., Shepherd, K., Suchard, M., Grant D. Zazula, Beth Shapiro, B., Gilbert, M.T.P. 2010. Ancient DNA analyses exclude humans as the driving force behind late Pleistocene musk ox (Ovibos moschatus) population dynamics. PNAS 107 (12): 5675–5680.
Gunn, A. and J. Adamczewski. 2003. Muskox (Ovibos moschatus). In Wild Mammals of North America, edited by Feldhamer, G. A., B. C. Thompson, pp. 1076-1094. The Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, MD.
MacPhee, R. and A. Greenwood. 2007. Continuity and Change in the Extinction Dynamics of Late Quaternary Muskox (OVIBOS): Genetic and Radiometric Evidence. Bulletin of Carnegie Museum of Natural History 39:203-212.
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