Antelope and cattle radiate
The bovids arrive in Africa and become the great grazing herds of the Old World.
- When
- —
- Duration
- 13 million years
- Known to
- ± 1 million years
- Era
- Miocene, Cenozoic
Bovids — cattle, sheep, goats, antelope and their relatives — cross into Africa after the land bridge forms and diversify enormously as grasslands expand, with permanent unbranched horns of bone covered in keratin rather than the shed antlers of deer. They come to define African savanna ecosystems and dominate the herbivore fauna of the Old World's open habitats. Several of these lineages are the ones that will later be domesticated, which makes this radiation an ancestor of agriculture.