Half-Ton Early Bovines Roamed 4-Million-Year-Old Grasslands in Europe

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.

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.

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.