English: Wyoming's Wildlife

Pronghorns and Sagebrush - Of all our magnificent big game animals, only the pronghorn antelope cannot be traced back to Eurasia. other big game animals are believed to have migrated to the continent via the now sunken Bering Land mass located between Siberia and Alaska. Thus, it can be said that the pronghorn is a true native of North America.

The pronghorn is not a true antelope and belongs to an entirely different family (Antilocapridae) than other antelope. The pronghorn is the only living representative of this family. Like other horned animals (i.e., cattle, sheep, goats) the pronghorn grows hollow horn sheaths composed of fused hairy fibers. It is the only horned animal in the world that sheds and regrows its sheaths annually and is the only horned animal with a branched or pronged horn. Members of the deer family (i.e. deer, elk, moose) grow antlers, not horns, of solid bone which are also shed and regrown each year. The pronghorn is also one of the world's fastest animals and bhas been clocked at speeds up to 70 miles per hour.