Antlers are like giant, imposing cradles, sometimes stretching out from an animal’s head in a bowl-like shape with horns reaching for the sky.
And there is variation in horns and antlers among many animals. In a recent study published in Communications Biology, researchers found that ruminant headgear may have evolved from a common ancestor that lived 15 million years to 20 million years ago.
“There’s some sort of genetic predisposition that this family has towards ornamentation,” says Zachary Calamari, an evolutionary biologist at the City University of New York and the American Museum of Natural History.
Hoofed Mammals with Headgear
Ruminants are a group of even-toed hoofed mammals that are divided into six major groups. There are four with some sort of headgear, whether they are horns, antlers, ossicones for giraffes.
