Bison and wild cattle appear
Large grazing bovids spread across the northern grasslands and become the dominant herd animals.
- When
- —
- Duration
- 1.2 million years
- Known to
- ± 200 thousand years
- Era
- Early Pleistocene, Quaternary
Bison and the aurochs, Bos primigenius, both originate in the Early Pleistocene and spread widely across Eurasia, with bison later crossing into North America over the Bering land bridge. They are bulk grazers suited to the cold open steppe, and they become the dominant large herbivores of the mammoth steppe alongside horse and mammoth. Both are also the animals most often painted on cave walls much later, and the aurochs is the wild ancestor of every domestic cow.