History of the domestic sheep exact line of descent between domestic sheep and their wild ancestors is unclear. The most common hypothesis states that "Ovis aries" is descended from the Asiatic ("O. orientalis") species of mouflon. A few breeds of sheep, such as the Castlemilk Moorit from Scotland, were formed through crossbreeding with wild European mouflon. The urial ("O. vignei") was once thought to have been a forebear of domestic sheep, as they occasionally interbreed with mouflon in the Iranian part of their range. However, the urial, argali ("O. ammon"), and snow sheep ("O. nivicola") have a different number of chromosomes than other Ovis species,
European mouflon Grunewald (where mouflon had been kept since 1905), were brought to the state enclosure at Kaundorf in the Ösling. They were released in 1970 and spread to the Obersauer region. There are also mouflon in the area of Hosingen (Ösling) and especially in the canton of Echternach (Gutland). In Corsica and Sardinia the European mouflon was endangered by hunting and poaching. Only strict regulation and resettlements appear to have slowly stabilized the population. In Corsica, where hunting for mouflon has been prohibited since 1953, there were only about 180 in 1967, but by the 2010 the population had grown to