Editing Muskox (section)

=== Prehistory ===
During the [[Pleistocene]] period, muskoxen were much more widespread. Fossil evidence shows that they lived across the Siberian and North American Arctic, from the [[Urals]] to [[Greenland]].<ref name="Switek" /> The ancestors of today's muskoxen came across the [[Bering Land Bridge]] to North America between 200,000<ref name="WMAC" /> and 90,000 years ago.<ref name="HWW" /> During the [[Wisconsinan]], modern muskox thrived in the [[tundra]] south of the [[Laurentide Ice Sheet]], in what is now the [[Midwest]], the [[Appalachians]] and [[Virginia]], while distant relatives ''[[Bootherium]]'' and ''[[Euceratherium]]'' lived in the forests of the [[Southern United States]] and the western shrubland, respectively.<ref name="Wisconsinan Mammalian Faunas" /> Though they were always less common than other Ice Age megafauna, muskox abundance peaked during the [[Würm II glaciation]] 20,000 years ago and declined afterwards, especially during the [[Pleistocene]]/[[Holocene]] [[Quaternary extinction event|extinction event]], where its range was greatly reduced and only the populations in North America survived. The last known muskox population in Europe died out in [[Sweden]] 9,000 years ago.<ref name="Lent1999" /> In Asia, muskox persisted until just 615-555 BCE in [[Tumat]], [[Sakha Republic]].<ref name="Plasteeva">Plasteeva, N. A., Gasilin, V. V., Devjashin, M. M., & Kosintsev, P. A. (2020). Holocene Distribution and Extinction of Ungulates in Northern Eurasia. ''Biology Bulletin'', 47(8), 981-995.</ref>{{failed verification|date=August 2023}}

Following the disappearance of the [[Laurentide Ice Sheet]], the muskox gradually moved north across the [[Canadian Arctic Archipelago]], arriving in [[Greenland]] from [[Ellesmere Island]] at about 350 AD, during the late [[Holocene]]. Their arrival in northwestern Greenland probably occurred within a few hundred years of the arrival of the [[Dorset people|Dorset]] and [[Thule people|Thule]] cultures in the present-day [[Qaanaaq]] area. Human predation around Qaanaaq may have restricted muskoxen from moving down the west coast, and instead kept them confined to the northeastern fringes of the island.<ref>{{cite journal |doi=10.1017/S0032247404004127 |title=New dates of musk-ox (''Ovibos moschatus'') remains from northwest Greenland |year=2005 |last1=Bennike |first1=Ole |last2=Andreasen |first2=Claus |journal=Polar Record |volume=41 |issue=2 |pages=125–129 |bibcode=2005PoRec..41..125B |s2cid=128814689}}</ref>