Myotragus

Common card · No. 236598

Myotragus (Neo-Latin, derived from the Greek: μῦς, τράγος "mouse-goat") is an extinct genus of goat-antelope in the tribe Caprini which lived on the Balearic Islands of Mallorca and Menorca in the western Mediterranean until its extinction around 4,300 years ago. The fossil record of Myotragus on the Balearic Islands extends over 5 million years back to the early Pliocene on Mallorca, thought to have arrived from the European mainland after the evaporation of the Mediterranean Sea during the Messinian Salinity Crisis at the end of the Miocene epoch (around 5.96-5.33 million years ago). Following the refilling of the Mediterranean at the beginning of the Pliocene, the Balearic Islands remained strongly isolated, allowing the evolution of Myotragus to occur over the next 5.3 million years with little outside influence. Myotragus is represented by six sequential chronospecies showing progressive morphological change, including a reduction in body size, over the course of over 5 million years...

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