A large African antelope with long, lyre-shaped horns, now extinct, that once roamed the Sahara and North African regions.
From Arabic 'bubāl' or similar Afro-Asiatic roots, referring to this specific antelope species. The English term was adopted from Arabic-speaking peoples of North Africa who knew the animal well.
The bubal went extinct in 1923, making it one of the last large African megafauna to disappear—today we know it mainly through museum specimens and historical accounts, a ghost of ecosystems that once thrived across the Sahara.
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