Pliny was right that the 3 kinds of wild oxen, European bison, aurochs and African buffalo have very different appearances and can be confused only by someone who has not seen them previously, so for each of them, their proper name should be used, not the name of an only distantly-related species. the ignorant masses call both kinds of wild oxen as buffaloes, even if the buffalo is a different kind of wild ox "which is native to Africa". The word "bison" is also appropriate for its close relative, the North-American bison. There is no doubt from the description from Pliny that "bison" was applied specifically to the European wood bison and not to any other kind of wild ox. He wrote that in Germany there are 2 kinds of wild oxen, "bisontes et uros", i.e. One of the few occurrences of the word "bison" in Latin appears in Pliny the Elder. "Bison" appears only in a few late authors of the Roman Empire, as a Germanic loanword, corresponding to the modern German word "Wisent".
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