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SPECIES Bos frontalis

Author:Lambert, 1804.
Citation:Trans. Linn. Soc. Lond., 7: 57.
Common Name:Gaur
Type Locality:Native "of the hills to the north-east and east of the Company's province of Chittagong in Bengal, inhabiting that range of hills which separate it from the country of Arracan" (Bangladesh, NE Chittagong).
Distribution:Bangladesh, Burma, Cambodia, China (S Tibet and Yunnan), India, Laos, Malaysia (peninsular Malaya), Nepal, Sri Lanka (extinct), Thailand, and S Vietnam.
Status:CITES – Appendix I as B. gaurus (excluding domesticated form); U.S. ESA – Endangered as B. gaurus; IUCN – Vulnerable.
Comments:The name frontalis was based on a Gyall or Gayal (also known as Mithan). These are wild animals recurrently taken into captivity and hence categorised as feral or domestic. Gayal derive from wild Gaur and differ in proportions but are uniform and tend to breed true; interbreeding with domestic cattle appears to be relatively recent (Simoons, 1984). Includes gaurus; but see Corbet and Hill (1991:130). Formerly placed in Bibos. Gentry et al. (1996) proposed that majority usage be confirmed by adoption of Bos gaurus as the name for the wild taxon of Gaur and asked the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature to use its plenary powers to rule that the name for this wild species is not invalid by virtue of being antedated by the name based on the domestic form. A ruling has now been made in their favour (International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature, 2003a). It may still be valid for those who consider B. gaurus and B. frontalis to be conspecific to employ the senior name for the name of the species (see Bock, 1997). Gayal possibly originated from the form laosiensis, hence frontalis could be a synonym of laosiensis. Nearly all authors have termed the Gaur B. gaurus rather than B. frontalis (or B. f. gaurus). Provisionally gaurus and laosiensis are here listed as subspecies of frontalis. Gaur that survived into historic times on Sri Lanka were named from fossil material as †sinhaleyus (Deraniyagala, 1951).
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Offspring:

SUBSPECIES frontalis

SUBSPECIES laosiensis

SUBSPECIES gaurus

SUBSPECIES sinhaleyus

Synonyms:


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