In-Situ Bison Skull Photos/video

[Beekeeper]

Finally got to dig a really old bison skeleton that I found last September. Big thanks to FF member Truceburner and others who came out to excavate.

There was a lot of overburden & when we took it off there were still lots of roots in the way. Some of the roots did considerable damage so I'll need to do repair work on the skull. The lower jaw & soil/bone samples are going to a school in San Antonio to be carbon dated and studied. At this point I believe the window of age for this animal is between 200 and 4000 years old.

[Beekeeper]

A few more pics...

[fossilized6s]

Beautiful! Nice find! Hopefully you can stabilize it enough to get er out intact.

[PFOOLEY]

That is really cool! Vinac, vinac, vinac! Good luck and thanks for the update.

[Uncle Siphuncle]

Very cool articulated find, whatever the age.

[KansasFossilHunter]

That's cool! It reminds me of the more recent one I found in 2013:

[Xiphactinus]

Beautiful skull! Thanks for the in situ photos.

[mikeymig]

Looks like a lot of fun! I would love to find that.

mikey

[JohnJ]

I see the results of a lot of sweat...sometimes this fun is work, but it's worth it. Congratulations, guys.

[smokeriderdon]

OK, that is just freaking cool! Great find!

[jpc]

Wow.. nice skull. Do you have any pix of the site from further away, so we can see where you almost fell off. I think I saw that in another post on this topic.

[jpevahouse]

I've always been wary of bison bones found out west. Considering the abundance of bison on the plains until recently I've always wondered how it's possible to sort out fossil remains from modern remains. Ice age fossils seem to rarely be found in situ but rather deposited in stream beds by erosion. I commonly find relatively recent bones in the stream beds around here mixed with Cretaecous fossils. I've saved examples because they are often just as darkly stained as prehistoric bones. Visually it would be difficult to determine their age from characteristics like color.

There are some areas and conditions where relatively modern bone can quickly mineralize.

I have two bison vertebrae found in a stream in Kansas the person who found them considered Pleistocene. I also have a wild boar mandible found in the same location. The wild boar is not native to North America and was introduced by early settlers. It looks just as old as the two bison vertebrae. The bones didn't cost much and I find them interesting but at the same time I find people too anxious to declare every old bone found in a stream bed a fossil.

It's possible since the bones you found eroded from higher on the bank than where they were found? I don't know but I would consider the location and the soil erosion along the bank. I've hunted Indian relics along rivers where erosion has carried them from the top of a high embankment and scattered them in collapsed layers below.

I don't mean this critically or question your find but as a general subject concerning how to accurately discern age, particularly for species of animals still living.

A good example is all the Florida bones listed on eBay of every North American species all listed as 10,000 years old!

[erose]

I am so impressed with the fact that you are carrying this through. And not everyone finds a skull to go with the rest.

jpevahouse makes a good point about the provenance of so much of our "ice age" material being questionable. But I think the fact that yours is fairly deep in the bank will prove it does have some age.

[truceburner]

It was a pleasure to work on this excavation with Beekeeper. I set up a camera and took over 1,000 photos on 1-minute intervals during the long weekend, and will put those together into a time-lapse movie very soon. As for the age of the specimen - you'll note that Beekeeper isn't implying that this is Ice Age material. It's not fossilized, and he doesn't claim it is. We will find out how old it is soon enough.

In the meantime, here are some other photos of the dig.

Also, a shout out to those on the forum and elsewhere who guided Beekeeper along the way. He got some good advise from folks and did a proper job setting up the dig. Nice work, Ryan!

[truceburner]

By the way, under that cowboy hat is David Calame, a steward for the Texas Archeological Society and a digger at heart. He moves more dirt in a day than most of us could move all year. Big thanks to David for leading the way at the dig. He's one of a kind.

[Xiphactinus]

I've always been wary of bison bones found out west. Considering the abundance of bison on the plains until recently I've always wondered how it's possible to sort out fossil remains from modern remains. Ice age fossils seem to rarely be found in situ but rather deposited in stream beds by erosion. I commonly find relatively recent bones in the stream beds around here mixed with Cretaecous fossils. I've saved examples because they are often just as darkly stained as prehistoric bones. Visually it would be difficult to determine their age from characteristics like color.

There are some areas and conditions where relatively modern bone can quickly mineralize.

I have two bison vertebrae found in a stream in Kansas the person who found them considered Pleistocene. I also have a wild boar mandible found in the same location. The wild boar is not native to North America and was introduced by early settlers. It looks just as old as the two bison vertebrae. The bones didn't cost much and I find them interesting but at the same time I find people too anxious to declare every old bone found in a stream bed a fossil.

It's possible since the bones you found eroded from higher on the bank than where they were found? I don't know but I would consider the location and the soil erosion along the bank. I've hunted Indian relics along rivers where erosion has carried them from the top of a high embankment and scattered them in collapsed layers below.

I don't mean this critically or question your find but as a general subject concerning how to accurately discern age, particularly for species of animals still living.

A good example is all the Florida bones listed on eBay of every North American species all listed as 10,000 years old!

jpevahouse - your KS stream fossils are probably from the Kansas River. There is indeed a lot of modern and ice age material mixed together. I have a mammoth vertebra from there that is not mineralized at all, and found an ebony black, shiny T-bone nearby. I would have said the T-bone was Pleistocene and the mammoth recent based on preservation!

Since the skull in question is in-situ and articulated it will be interesting to see how old it is. We found a bison skull in W Kansas in the glacial deposits that is not mineralized at all, but was found 10 yards from a fragment of mammoth tusk, so we are calling it "Pleistocene" based on that. Hard to tell with animals that are still around....

[jpevahouse]

I am so impressed with the fact that you are carrying this through. And not everyone finds a skull to go with the rest.

jpevahouse makes a good point about the provenance of so much of our "ice age" material being questionable. But I think the fact that yours is fairly deep in the bank will prove it does have some age.

Considering the large amount of bones bought and sold through the internet, mostly assumed to be ancient, it's worthwhile for collectors to question whether bones found in river beds and other deposits created from erosion are in fact ancient. I haven't seen too many mammoths or mastodons around lately. It's a no brainer to assume extinct animals remains to be ancient and fossil. Also horse, bison, camel and peccary east of the Mississippi River where they have had little or no presence in a very long time. Mastodon bones in this area have been found along with more modern bones. In a deposit created by erosion association doesn't necessarily mean much.

[JohnM]

_{I have what I believe to be a Bison antiquus skull found on private land in northcentral South Dakota. I'm putting together a paper on the skull, and kind of new to this. I would like to include an accurate evolutionary chart of the first bision (priscus if correct) in North America to the present day Bison. Does anyone have such a chart or references?}

_{I have inlcuded a photo of the skull, which was found in a wet bog....one horn that was near the surface is missing. The person who gave it to me, states that they did not dig underneath the skull to see if the horn was there, or the jaw/teeth. With measurements, we determine it to be a juvinile Bison antiquus. Thanks}

_John

[mikeymig]

John, I have a copy of (North American Bison, McDonald 1981). This book is jammed with charts and detailed lineage information on the NA Bison. It's one of my favorite books in my collection and I take it with me every time I go out West when I'm around Bison.

mikey

[JohnJ]

Great work, Bruce and Ryan. It will be interesting to know what kind of age is determined by the testing. However, I have many Pleistocene age bones, including mammoth, that are not mineralized from the Central Texas area. Different chemistry is involved in different conditions; so, I wouldn't worry about a lack of mineralization being a consideration of age in this case.

[truceburner]

Ok, here's a link to my video of the skull and mandible excavation. Hope y'all like it.

[Auspex]

I LOVE it! It's a great documentary, and it really sucked me in

[JohnJ]

Dedication to the project...awesome.

[KansasFossilHunter]

I love that time lapse idea! I'll have to try that sometime.

[Bullsnake]

GDB, IMO!