When he first spotted them in the 1980s, geneticist Rubén Martínez couldn’t believe his eyes. He had heard reports about wild cattle in an unlikely corner of Argentine Patagonia. But not until he journeyed to the Patagonian province of Santa Cruz and hiked into the remote Bahía Onelli region did he finally see feral cattle surviving—indeed, thriving—amid the craggy mountains, glaciers and lenga forest. Martínez and his colleagues at the National University of Lomas de Zamora say the Bahía Onelli cattle, called Criollo Patagónico, are direct descendants of livestock that settlers brought with them to present-day Argentina in the 1500s. Though there are other wild-cattle populations in Patagonia, the Bahía Onelli animals are believed to be the most closely linked genetically... [Log in to read more]