#70539

Inuit Art: Muskox
Artist: Kelly Etidlouie

Size: 9 1/4″ High x 6″ Long  x 4 1/4” Wide

Community: Cape Dorset  Year: 2024     Stone: Serpentine

_ Muskox _

Muskox are large and hairy goat-like mammals with impressive horns, adapted to extremely cold grassland environments.

There were originally two types of muskox in North America but only the tundra Muskoxen (Ovibos moschatus)

survived the megafuana extinction associated with the end of the last age. Muskox crossed the land bridge from Siberia to North America

during the last ice age about 90,000 years ago and thrived with the Wooly Mammoth and other large mammals on the dry, cold grassland

of Alaska and Yukon that was never glaciated called Beringia. Muskox also lived just south of the edges of glaciers, and their range expanded

about 10,000 years ago as the circumpolar glaciers disappeared. They spread across the Arctic from Siberia, to Alaska, across the Arctic

Archipelago and mainland tundra of Canada, to Greenland.

At one time during the ice age, their range included areas as far south as Toronto, Canada.