The aurochs was a large, long-horned bovine present across Eurasia and North Africa through the Pleistocene and into historic times. It is the wild ancestor of the domestic cow, and cattle are consequently often written as Bos taurus or as the subspecies Bos primigenius taurus depending on the convention followed.
Genetic and archaeological evidence points to at least two independent domestication events. Taurine cattle derive from Near Eastern aurochs domesticated roughly ten thousand years ago, apparently from a small founding group. Zebu cattle, humped and heat-tolerant, derive from a separate South Asian aurochs population. A third North African contribution has been proposed and is less firmly established.
The wild form declined through hunting and the conversion of its habitat to farmland, retreating to a final protected herd in the Jaktorow Forest west of Warsaw, where the last cow died in 1627. Modern back-bred cattle such as Heck cattle resemble the aurochs in build but are not a reconstitution of it.