Palaeoartistic reconstruction of the environment in the surrounding of Camp dels Ninots maar lake during the early Pliocene.
Artwork by Mauricio Antón.
This is easily explained once we recognise that the authors of Genesis had a narrow, parochial view of the world. They knew little or nothing of Earth’s history or of the origins of life on it, so they made up stories that conformed to their own cultural assumptions and superstitions, often borrowing from neighbouring cultures.
They were completely unaware of the rest of Eurasia beyond their limited view from the Canaanite hills, and equally unaware of the great age of the Earth or the cycles of glacial and interglacial periods that had characterised it for the previous several million years. Indeed, the concept of such deep time seems to have been far beyond their comprehension. They could therefore have had no concept of the early forms of cattle-like bovines that once roamed Europe, already fitted by evolution for life in the changing environments of the Pliocene.
One such animal was a large bovine species, weighing up to about half a ton, which lived in what is now north-eastern Iberia about 4.41 million years ago. The discovery and re-analysis of this animal has just been published in PLOS One by Leonardo Sorbelli of the Leibniz Institute for Evolution and Biodiversity Science, Germany, and colleagues.
The fossils, from the Camp dels Ninots site in Catalonia, include remains from at least 14 individuals, among them eight nearly complete and partly articulated skeletons. The species, Parabos tigneresi, helps fill a gap in the evolutionary history of Eurasian bovines, including the wider lineage that eventually gave rise to modern cattle, bison and buffalo. Although smaller than many living domestic cattle, these animals were larger than comparable bovids of their time, suggesting an early stage in the increase in body size that later became characteristic of the bovine lineage.
The researchers suggest that this increase in size may have been associated with the climatic and environmental changes that characterised Pliocene Europe. The anatomy of Parabos tigneresi also indicates an animal adapted mainly to humid, vegetation-rich environments, consistent with the reconstructed setting of Camp dels Ninots as a water-rich maar lake ecosystem.
This incidental confirmation of an earlier reconstruction of the lake ecosystem at Camp dels Ninots is a good example of how independent strands of evidence converge on the same conclusion. It also illustrates the strength of Darwinian evolutionary theory: organisms are expected to show adaptations to the environments in which they lived, rather than appearing as arbitrary, ready-made forms. In this case, the anatomy of these bovids is consistent with animals adapted to a humid, vegetation-rich lakeside habitat, exactly as the geological and palaeoecological evidence had already indicated.
Background^ The Origins of the Eurasian Bovids.The paper in PLOS One was accompanied by a news release from PLOS via EurekAlert!:The Bovidae are the large ruminant family that includes cattle, bison, buffalo, antelopes, gazelles, sheep and goats. They are distinguished, among other things, by permanent, unbranched horn cores covered in life by a keratin sheath. Their history is not one of sudden appearance, but of gradual diversification from small, deer- or gazelle-like ruminants during the Miocene.The key points above are based on Bibi and colleagues’ review of the bovid fossil record, which places early Eotragus-like forms around 18–17 Ma and notes that early Bovinae must already have split from other bovids by about 18 Ma. It also notes probable stem Bovini in southern Asia by about 9 Ma, followed by dispersal into Africa and Europe. The newer PLOS One paper treats Parabos tigneresi as either among the earliest European stem Bovini or among the last members of the related Tragoportacini radiation.
Some of the earliest fossil bovids are usually placed in or near the genus Eotragus, known from early Miocene deposits in Europe and Asia, roughly 18–17 million years ago. These were small animals, very unlike modern cattle, but they already show features that place them close to the roots of the bovid family tree. From such early forms, the major bovid lineages diversified into several branches, including the Bovinae — the wider group that includes cattle, buffaloes, bison, nilgai and related extinct forms.
The early history of the cattle-like branch, Bovini, is more difficult to reconstruct because the fossil record is incomplete and several extinct Miocene groups show mixtures of primitive and more bovine-like features. Some late Miocene “boselaphine” and tragoportacin bovids from Eurasia appear close to the ancestry of later bovines, but their exact relationships remain debated. Stem Bovini were probably present in southern Asia by about 9 million years ago, after which bovine lineages spread into Africa and, later, into Europe.
By the Pliocene, Europe had its own large bovines or bovine-like forms, including Parabos, Alephis and later Leptobos. These animals were not modern cattle, but they help bridge the evolutionary gap between earlier Miocene bovids and the later true cattle, bison and buffalo lineages. The newly described material of Parabos tigneresi from Camp dels Ninots is important because it captures this transitional period in Europe, when bovids were becoming larger and increasingly cattle-like, but had not yet become the familiar bovines of the Pleistocene and the present day.
In other words, the Eurasian bovids were not specially created as ready-made domestic animals for human use. They were the result of millions of years of ruminant evolution, dispersal, extinction, replacement and adaptation to changing climates and habitats. Domestic cattle came much later, when humans took one descendant of this long evolutionary history — the aurochs, Bos primigenius — and altered it further by artificial selection.
Half-ton early Bovines roamed 4-million-year-old grasslands in Europe
Complete skeletons from Iberia prompt revision of lifestyle and identity of early buffalo-like species
The first large-sized bovines grew to up to half a ton 4 million years ago in the European Early Pliocene, an early step toward our modern diversity of large-bodied buffalo and cattle, according to a study published June 3, 2026 in the open access journal PLOS One by Leonardo Sorbelli of the Leibniz Institute for Evolution and Biodiversity Science, Germany, and colleagues.
Palaeoartistic reconstruction of the environment in the surrounding of Camp dels Ninots maar lake during the early Pliocene.
Bovines are major components of many modern ecosystems as well as of human agriculture, particularly species of the tribe Bovini, which includes bison, buffalo, and cattle. But their evolutionary origins and their relationships with the most closely related groups have been unclear given a lack of well-preserved early fossils. The discovery of several near-complete skeletons at the 4.4-million-year-old site of Camp de Ninots in northeastern Iberia prompted Sorbelli and colleagues to re-examine these early European cattle relatives.
Osteology and in-life reconstruction of Parabos tigneresi based on the specimens from Camp dels Ninots. Cranium (A–C), dentition (D–I), skeleton (J) and life restoration of an adult male with colors based on the extant bongo (Tragelaphus euryceros) (K), with the position of the most important anatomical elements mentioned in the text. Drawings not to scale. Artwork by LS.
The researchers examined remains from at least 14 individuals in their study and identified them as Parabos tigneresi, part of a group of five buffalo-like species that inhabited Europe during the Early Pliocene. The largest of these specimens is estimated to have weighed nearly 500 kilograms, smaller than most living cattle species but larger than any other similar bovid of this time. These animals therefore represent an early stage of increasing body sizes in the bovine lineage, possibly as an adaptation to the climatic and environmental changes which characterized the European continent during the Pliocene. Their anatomy suggests that they predominantly inhabited a humid, vegetation-dense environment, matching the researchers’ understanding of the water-rich environment that existed at the Camp de Ninots site.
This study identifies the Early Pliocene as the beginning of the age of large bovines, but the exact relationships of Parabos remain unclear. Based on comparisons with other species, the authors conclude that Parabos either represent the earliest members of the tribe Bovini or the latest members of a related lineage, Tragoportacini, which were ultimately replaced by true buffaloes, cattle and bison. Future study into the anatomy and ecology of Parabos will help resolve precisely where these animals fit into the story of bovine evolution.
The bovids from Camp dels Ninots are among the most exquisite fossils from the Pliocene of Europe. The exceptional preservation of these animals has allowed us to better understand their anatomy and, therefore, the ecology of the first large-sized bovids to populate the continent. Working on these fossils has been both challenging and satisfying. The exceptional preservation and abundance of the remains have provided us with a large amount of data, which is unique for such ancient geological periods and opened a new window on our world before the arrival of humans.
Sorbelli L, Bibi F, Madurell-Malapeira J, Grandi F, Moreno-Ribas E, Oms O, et al.
Publication:
So here again, reality is not remotely what the Bible story leads its followers to expect. There is no sudden appearance of ready-made cattle for human use, no neat division between “wild” and “domestic” animals, and no hint of a world stocked in a single act of magic a few thousand years ago. Instead, there is a long, complex history of evolving ruminants, dispersing across changing landscapes, adapting to local environments, and giving rise over millions of years to the bovine lineages from which modern cattle, bison and buffalo eventually emerged.
Parabos tigneresi was not a failed attempt at a cow, nor a half-finished domestic animal waiting for humans to arrive. It was a successful Pliocene species, adapted to its own environment, living in a humid, vegetation-rich lakeside ecosystem long before there were humans to domesticate anything, and long before the authors of Genesis imagined their little world was the centre of creation.
The discovery at Camp dels Ninots is therefore another small but telling example of the way science builds a coherent picture from geology, anatomy, palaeoecology and evolutionary biology. Different lines of evidence converge on the same conclusion: these animals belonged to a real, ancient ecosystem, shaped by natural processes, not by the needs, myths or theological vanity of humans.
Creationism has no explanation for this, other than denial, special pleading or the usual retreat into metaphor whenever the facts become too awkward. Evolution, by contrast, explains why these animals existed, why they looked as they did, why they lived where they did, and how they fit into the wider history of life. Once again, the evidence is not merely consistent with evolution; it is exactly the sort of evidence we should expect if evolution is true — and exactly the sort of evidence that should not exist if Genesis were real history.
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