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15-689: The Gordolasque is a mountain river that flows from the Mercantour National Park in the Alpes-Maritimes department of southeastern France . It is 18.8 km (11.7 mi) long. Its source is in the Maritime Alps , near the Italian border. It flows into the river Vésubie below the perched village of Belvédère . This Alpes-Maritimes geographical article is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . This article related to

30-475: A comparison of the mitochondrial DNA control region (CR) found that two subspecies of urial, Ovis vignei (or orientalis ) arkal and O. v./o. bochariensis , grouped with two different clades of argali ( Ovis ammon ). The ancestral sheep is presumed to have had 60 chromosomes , as in goats ( Capra ). Mouflon and domestic sheep have 54 chromosomes, with three pairs (1+3, 2+8, 5+11) of ancestral acrocentric chromosomes joined to form bi-armed chromosomes. This

45-589: A river in France is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Mercantour National Park The protected area covers some 679 km , consisting of a central uninhabited zone comprising seven valleys: Roya , Bévéra , Vésubie , Tinée , Haut Var and Cians (in Alpes-Maritimes ) plus Verdon and Ubaye (in Alpes-de-Haute-Provence ), as well as a peripheral zone comprising 28 villages. Many of them are perched villages, such as Belvédère at

60-712: Is in contrast to the argali and urial, which have 56 and 58 chromosomes respectively. If the urial is as closely related to the mouflons as mitochondrial DNA indicates, then two chromosomes would need to have split during its evolution away from the mouflon (sub)species. Mouflon have reddish to dark brown, short-haired coats with dark back stripes and black ventral areas and light-colored saddle patches. The males are horned ; some females are horned, while others are polled . The horns of mature rams are curved almost one full revolution (up to 85 cm). Mouflon have shoulder heights of around 0.9 m and body weights of 50 kg (males) and 35 kg (females). Mouflon are found in

75-721: Is only allowed with a special license. The population in Cyprus is listed as a strictly protected species in the Habitats Directive of the European Union and has been listed in CITES Appendix I since November 2019. The male mouflon is called Mufro in Corsica, and the female Mufra ; the French naturalist Buffon (1707–1788) rendered this in French as moufflon . In Sardinia,

90-712: Is the Musée des Merveilles at Tende . Several lakes can be visited, for example the lake of Allos , the lake of the Lauzanier , the lakes of Vens , the lakes of Morgon , and the lakes of the valley of marvels. In addition to the holm oak , the Mediterranean olive tree , rhododendrons , firs , spruces , Swiss pines and above all larches , the Mercantour is also endowed with more than 2,000 species of flowering plants, 200 of which are very rare: edelweiss and martagon lily are

105-812: The Lesser Caucasus in southeastern Turkey, Armenia and Azerbaijan, and in Iran's western Alborz region and the Zagros Mountains spanning eastern Iraq and western Iran. They were possibly introduced to Cyprus during the Neolithic period. Mouflon rams have a strict dominance hierarchy. Before mating season or "rut", which is from late autumn to early winter, rams try to create a dominance hierarchy to determine access to ewes (female mouflon) for mating. Mouflon rams fight one another to obtain dominance and win an opportunity to mate with females. Mouflons reach sexual maturity at

120-452: The age of two to four years. Young rams need to obtain dominance before they get a chance to mate, which takes another three years. Mouflon ewes also go through a similar hierarchy process in terms of social status in the first two years, but can breed even at low status. Pregnancy in females lasts five months, in which they produce one to two offspring. A mouflon was cloned successfully in early 2001, and lived at least seven months, making it

135-515: The beginning of the 1990s). A Wolves Centre welcomes visitors in Saint-martin-Vésubie . Mouflon The mouflon ( Ovis gmelini ) is a wild sheep native to Cyprus, and the Caspian region, including eastern Turkey, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia and Iran. It is also found in parts of Europe. It is thought to be the ancestor of all modern domestic sheep breeds. Ovis gmelini

150-513: The best known, but there is also saxifrage with multiple flowers, houseleek , moss campion and gentian offering a multi-coloured palette in the spring. The Mercantour is the site of a large-scale All Taxa Biodiversity Inventory and Monitoring programme to identify all its living species, organised by the European Distributed Institute of Taxonomy (EDIT). Walkers may easily glimpse a chamois , several thousand of which live in

165-514: The entrance to the spectacular Gordolasque valley, concealing great architectural riches (numerous churches decorated with murals and altar pieces by primitive Niçois painters). More than 150 rural sites are located within the Park. Around Mont Bégo there are petroglyphs pecked out on schist and granite faces. They have been dated from the late Neolithic and Bronze Ages. In the heart of this setting of vertiginous summits (including Cime du Gélas ,

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180-490: The first clone of an endangered mammal to survive beyond infancy. This demonstrated that a common species (in this case, a domestic sheep) can successfully become a surrogate for the birth of an exotic animal such as the mouflon. If cloning of the mouflon can proceed successfully, it has the potential to reduce strain on the number of living specimens. The mouflon is protected in Armenia and Azerbaijan. In Turkey and Iran, hunting

195-570: The park, and may often hear the whistling of marmots . The ermine is rarer (and more furtive), as are the ibex and the mouflon , although with a little luck you may be able to observe them during the coolest parts of the day in the summer. There is a tremendous variety of wildlife in the Mercantour: red deer and roe deer in the undergrowth, hares and wild boars , partridges , golden eagles and buzzards , numerous species of butterflies and even about 50 Italian wolves (which migrated there at

210-454: The third highest mountain in the Maritime Alps at 3,143 m), lies a gem listed as a Historical Monument, the famous Vallée des Merveilles , the aptly named " valley of marvels ". At the foot of Mont Bégo , climbers can admire some 37,000 petroglyphs dating back to the Bronze Age , representing weapons, cattle and human figures that are sometimes very mysterious. A less challenging destination

225-848: Was the scientific name proposed by Edward Blyth in 1841 for wild sheep in the Middle East . In the 19th and 20th centuries, several wild sheep were described that are considered mouflon subspecies today: Five mouflon subspecies are distinguished by MSW3 : The European mouflon was once thought to be a subspecies of the mouflon, but is now considered to be a feral descendant of the domestic sheep ( Ovis aries ), as Ovis aries musimon . Based on comparison of mitochondrial cytochrome b gene sequences, three groups of sheep ( Ovis ) have been identified: Pachyceriforms of Siberia ( snow sheep ) and North America ( bighorn and Dall sheep ), Argaliforms ( argali ) of Central Asia, and Moufloniforms ( urial , mouflon, and domestic sheep ) of Eurasia. However,

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