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Badlands bighorn
Ovis canadensis auduboni.jpg
Only known photo of a Badlands bighorn
Conservation status

Extinct  (1926) (IUCN 3.1)
Scientific classification e
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Mammalia
Order: Artiodactyla
Family: Bovidae
Subfamily: Caprinae
Genus: Ovis
Species:
Subspecies:
O. c. auduboni
Trinomial name
Ovis canadensis auduboni
Merriam, 1901

The Badlands bighorn, Ovis canadensis auduboni, also commonly known as Audubon's bighorn sheep, is an extinct subspecies of bighorn sheep of the northern Great Plains in North America. Its existence as a separate subspecies is disputed.

Former distribution

While the one common name refers to the Badlands region of the Dakotas, it inhabited a larger range that included Montana, Wyoming, Nebraska, South Dakota, and North Dakota.

Some sources assert that the subspecies was hunted to extinction in the early 1900s. Others claim that the subspecies persisted as long as 1926.

Biologists Wehausen and Ramey assert that it was not a unique bighorn sheep subspecies but rather a variation of the widespread Rocky Mountain Bighorn (Ovis canadensis canadensis). Some later studies do not support the existence of the Badlands Bighorn as a distinct subspecies.

Rocky Mountain bighorn have replaced the subspecies/variation in its former habitats.

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