How oxen that eluded extinction might help other species survive

By Natalie Angier | New York Times | Updated: 2010-12-26 09:24

Research on musk oxen may help other species avoid extinction. They live on though most of their brethren vanished at the end of the last ice age. Arctic National Wildlife Refuge / Associated Press; Top, Jim Lavrakas / Anchorage Daily News / AP

Scientists are trying to understand how the musk ox, a holdover from the Pleistocene now found only in Arctic North America, Greenland and pockets of Siberia and Scandinavia, has managed to persist through repeated climate shifts and habitat upheavals.