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Bison Bob a Big Discovery on the NorthSlopeBy Ned Rozell | Geographical Institute 23 hours 44 minutes ago

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Dan Mann holds the skull of a steppe bison that died on AlaskasNorth Slope more than 40,000 years ago. Photo by Pam Groves.

As she scraped cold dirt fromthe remains of an extinct bison,Pam Groves wrinkled her nose ata rotten-egg smell wafting fromgristle that still clung to theanimals bones.

She lifted her head to scan thehorizon, wary of bears that mightbe attracted to the flesh of acreature that gasped its last breath40,000 years ago. In the type of discovery they havedreamed about for years, Grovesand Dan Mann, both researchers at

the University of Alaska Fairbanks, in summer 2012 found in the thawing bank of anorthern river almost the entire skeleton of a steppe bison that died during the last iceage. In adventurous work sponsored by the Bureau of Land Management, Mann andGroves have been boating down lonely northern rivers for 15 years looking forscattered bones of ice age mammals, always hoping to find a complete skeleton ormummy of a mammoth, horse, or American lion. In mid-June, on a familiar stretch ofriver that flows northward on Alaskas North Slope, they rounded a river bend and sawthe skull of a large bison trapped against a willow shrub. Groves described the scene: We were paddling downriver, battling through a nastysquall of hail and wind, thinking about our camping spot about a mile downriver, shesaid. When the hail was just breaking up, we saw the upside-down skull with the lowerjaw still attached. The teeth were really white. They stood out. The pair landed their inflatable canoe at the base of the 60-foot bluff. Even before theystepped out in their rubber boots, Groves spotted other bones that told her this wasnt

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an ordinary site. Though this ever-changing wall had yielded many bones over theyears, those were scattered remains of ice-age creatures separated by meanderingriver action and the crumbling and re-forming of permafrost-cemented bluffs. Mann saidtheir typical discoveries resemble Pleistocene in a blender. Its really unusual to find bones that are still articulated (together), he said. Wevenever found anything this intact before. I think its really exciting when we find singlelion bones. Groves and Mann spent the next four hours carefully removing soil from the skull.When Mann lifted it out, the spread of the steppe bisons horns was 43 inches. Therecord Boone and Crockett modern bison has a horn tip spread of 27 inches. Fairbanksexpert on Pleistocene animals Dale Guthrie estimated this bison, which Mann andGroves have nicknamed Bison Bob, was a 12-year-old male that weighed around1,200 pounds. After stowing the skull safely in the front of their canoe, Groves and Mann camped forthe night. When they returned to the site, they saw more bones sticking out of frozenbluff sediments. Bones of each leg were still connected by ligaments. Reddish-brownhair clung to some bones. When I saw the fur, thats when I really got excited, Mann said. The pair worked the bluff for the next three days, pulling up buckets of river water tothaw the pieces of their rare find. They ended up finding every piece of the animalsskeleton except for a left shoulder blade. With a few hundred bison parts attracting blowflies in their camp, Mann and Grovesawaited a helicopter they had called to transport the bison to somewhere safer. Shortly after their find, on a satellite phone they tried to contact archaeologist MikeKunz, their longtime collaborator at the Bureau of Land Management. Kunz isinterested in the ancient Paleoindians that once lived on Alaskas North Slope and whatmight have caused both them and bison to disappear about 10,000 years ago. Badweather kept Kunz pinned down at the archaeological site he was digging severalhundred miles away, but a helicopter arrived near Mann and Groves and transportedBison Bob to a North Slope BLM camp. There, someone put the bones in a predator-proof case. Bison Bob was soon on a flight to Fairbanks, where he now resides in a freezer at atemperature similar to the bluff in which he was entombed. Bison Bob was so wellpreserved, Groves and Mann think, because the bison probably got caught inquicksand 40,000 years ago. The river buried Bison Bob, and there he remained, hisbody becoming permafrost. Groves and Mann happened to float by just as Bison Bobwas coming out of the crumbling bluff for the first time. It was a total fluke, Mann said. If we came by two days later, a landslide would haveburied him. Familiar in cave drawings in Spain and France, the steppe bison lived during the iceage in Alaska on a grassy landscape with mammoth, musk oxen, horse, caribou, lions,wolves and two species of bears. Bison Bob was a Bison priscus, which evolved intothe buffalo we know today, though Bison Bob and his kind were more than one foottaller at the shoulder and 25 percent bigger.



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Though researchers and miners have found other steppe bison in Alaska mostnotably Blue Babe, displayed at the UA Museum of the North Bison Bob standsapart for the completeness of the skeleton (a lion had killed Blue Babe, and otheranimals scavenged the carcass, which was missing its pelvis and parts of its legs). This is the kind of thing weve always dreamed about finding, Groves said. Theres alot of information you can get from an entire skeleton: Because he had hair on you cantell what colors he was; with teeth and horn sheaths and hooves you can do isotopeanalysis to tell what he was eating and how his diet may have changed over the courseof a year. You even might be able to tell if he went south into the Brooks Range duringthe winter. The fleshy parts of Bison Bob will be useful to learn more detailed information aboutBison Bob, Mann said. Its got exquisite DNA in it, Mann said. When the researchers have finished with much of their analysis of Bison Bob, Grovessaid she would like to make casts of his bones and reassemble them for a display atthe UA Museum of the North. Then people can see what a big bison looked like, she said.

Since the late 1970s, the University of Alaska Fairbanks' Geophysical Institute hasprovided this column free in cooperation with the UAF research community. Ned Rozellis a science writer with the Geophysical Institute.

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