After Surviving Two Ice Ages, The Muskox is Bouncing Back From Near Extinction
Muskoxen have outlived wooly mammoths and sabertooth tigers. Efforts to repopulate the Arctic bring hope the prehistoric beasts can survive our latest warm spell. Muskoxen have populated the planet for at least 2.5 million years, crossing the Bering Strait land bridge into North America 2 million years ago.
Other than reindeer, they are the only arctic megafauna surviving from the Ice Ages. The wooly mammoths, sabertooth tigers and mastadons the muskox used to roam the frozen tundra with were not so lucky. They disappeared around 10,000 years ago as the earth began to warm and the human population began to boom. The muskox almost joined them in the late 1800s, but efforts to repopulate Alaska, Russia and Scandinavia have provided hope they could survive the current warm period Earth has been experiencing for about 12,000 years. There are currently about 170,000 muskoxen in the world, up from about 135,000 in 2008.