Anthropologist identifies rare Ice Age bison
13,000-year-old skull found along Missouri River banks

At the peak of the Ice Age, bison roamed Missouri. An MU anthropologist has identified the skull of one of the now extinct beasts found along the banks of the Missouri River as a female Bison antiquus and estimates its age at 13,000 years old.

According to R. Lee Lyman, chair of the Department of Anthropology, the skull contains the brain case, both horn cores and tops of the eye sockets. The actual face of the skeleton is missing. The skull was found about five years ago along the Missouri River near Jefferson City by a hiker who saw the brain case sticking up out of the ground and eventually uncovered the horns by digging into the ground.

Lyman did a series of measurements on the skull, which has a 77.5 cm. horn span, and verified his identification with an expert in ancient North American bison at Douglas College in British Columbia. A sample of bone tissue removed from the specimen submitted for radiocarbon dating indicated this individual bison lived in central Missouri between 13,500 and 14,000 years ago.

"Bison antiquus are, on average, larger than the modern bison or Bison bison," Lyman said. "All bison are sexually dimorphic, meaning the males are larger than the females. The size of this skull indicates that it is from a femaleBison antiquus ."

Lyman says Bison antiquus may have been abundant 10,000 to 18,000 years ago in the Pleistocene Era, or Ice Age, which ran from 10,000 to 1.8 million years ago. Paleobiologists believe this species evolved into modern bison about 8,000 years ago. Modern bison existed in Missouri in small numbers until 1,000 years ago. Lyman said as the Ice Age ended and forests began moving into the area, the animals pulled back to the Great Plains.

Lyman said a similar find was made in the St. Charles area in 2003. The St. Charles skull was examined by other experts who suggested it also represented Bison antiquus . However, no measurements were published on that specimen so it cannot be compared with the skull Lyman studied. Lyman credits the man who found this specimen, an MU employee, with helping society learn not only about the past but plan for the future.

"Skulls are pretty rare," Lyman said. "Seventy to 80 percent of what we learn from them is about the past, but the more we learn about the past, the better the decisions we can make about the future. For example, what were the plant communities and climate like when bison lived in Missouri? That is something we need to know if we want bison, perhaps with human help, to live here again. That’s really the important part of what we do in anthropology."

2004

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R. Lee Lyman
Department of Anthropology

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