Scientists are only now discovering the secrets of a little goat whose discovery put Mallorca firmly on the map
Now, if anyone had told me a few years ago that one day I’d be writing about old goats, and extinct ones at that, I’d have laughed heartily. True, for the past eight years I’ve lived with my husband, Alan, and son, Ollie, in the rural north west of Mallorca, where there’s a thriving population of wild mountain goats, but I’ve honestly never given them much thought. Then out of the blue, Professor Adrian Lister, an old friend, invited me to visit the Natural History Museum in London where he’d been offered the post of palaeontologist.
For many years, Adrian and I have served as trustees of The Scientific Exploration Society, a charity founded by famed British explorer Colonel Blashford-Snell. It organises humanitarian and scientific expeditions worldwide. Both of us have participated in tough, remote expeditions with the charity, so to wander behind the scenes at the Natural History Museum filled me with wonderment.
The day we met, Adrian led me through a labyrinth of rooms and labs that run behind the public areas of the museum. We examined countless skeletal remains of mammoths and dinosaurs, extraordinary ancient sea creatures and fauna and flora. It was only at the end of our tour that he told me he’d saved the best until last. What could it be? With a smile he pulled out a drawer of an antique cabinet to reveal what appeared to be the skeleton of a tiny goat.
“What is it?” I blurted.
He looked disappointed. “It’s Myotragus!”
“Doesn’t that mean mouse-goat in Ancient Greek?”
Studying Classics at university had at last proved of some small use.
“Yes, but surely you know about Myotragus Balearicus, the dwarf rodent-goat that roamed Mallorca as far back as five million years ago?”
A distant bell rang but not enough to convince Adrian that I knew my prehistoric Mallorcan history.
As I examined the creature carefully, I noticed that its eye sockets were at the front, not at the side like most bovids, and it had thrusting lower incisors and small, straight horns. Adrian explained that this strange animal was unique to Mallorca and Menorca and was discovered by Dorothea Bate, a feisty British fossil hunter who worked at the museum in the late 1800’s until the fifties. Rather like the Dodo, Myotragus was today still causing lively scientific debate about how it eventually became extinct.
Read the full article in our August 2009 issue.