Aurochs Skull Fragments

Found in Milton Quarry, Canterbury in 1988, these skull fragments are from aurochs – an ancestor of the modern cow which became extinct in 1627.

The aurochs is the ancestor of the modern cattle depicted in the paintings of Thomas Sidney Cooper. The aurochs were larger and stronger than today’s cows, almost a foot taller and weighed around one tonne. The animal became extinct in 1627 when the last of the species died in Poland. These fragments of an aurochs’ skull were found at Milton Gravel Quarry in Kent.

The aurochs inspired some of the earliest artworks ever made, images of the animal can be found in prehistoric cave paintings such as those in Lascaux and Chauvet in France and Altamira in Spain. These depictions suggest that the animal had an important cultural and spiritual significance to our hunter-gatherer ancestors.

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