Jenny Rojko, age 13, of Youngstown, Ohio, for her question:

WHY DID THE AUROCHS DIE OUT?

The aurochs were wild oxen of the ice ages  and our textbooks tell us that the last of them said goodby to the world about 300 years ago. This sounds like another sad story of an animal that failed to survive and became extinct. But when you hear the full story, you may change your mind.

Detailed records of the mighty auroch go back some 30,000 years. This is when talented artists of the Neolithic Age painted his portrait on the walls of their secret caves. His fossil records go back at least 250,000 years, when he was hunted by the cave men of Europe. Julius Caesar wrote a somewhat exaggerated description of him 2,000 years ago, when he sent back to Rome his reports of the wildlife in western Europe.

The final description of a living auroch goes back to 1627, when the last survivor died in a park in Poland. He was, they say, a giant ox, standing 6 1/2 feet tall. His huge curved horns were slender and very sharp.  His nose was dusky white, and there was a patch of white curls on his forehead. He wore a black coat set off with a white stripe down the center of his back.

The female auroch was somewhat smaller. She wore a reddish brown coat, with patches of black and tan. The auroch calf was rusty red. Surely they must have been a handsome family. What's more, they had survived the rigors of the ancient Ice Age climates  when their huge herds grazed peaceably in Europe and northern Africa.

What a pity that such splendid animals failed to survive until modern times. But this is not the whole story. For some of those wild oxen were domesticated by our early ancestors. Some 25,000 years ago, the farmers of Egypt drew pictures of their domestic cattle. They were aurochs. What's more, already there were domestic breeds of long horn, short¬horn and even hornless aurochs.

The splendid wild auroch was the ancestor of these first domestic cattle  and they were the ancestors of Elsie and all our modern dairy and beef breeds. True, the original wild auroch died out. But his family tree most certainly survived  in peaceable partnership with the human family.