MU researcher identifies ancient bison skull

COLUMBIA, Mo. -- A University of Missouri-Columbia researcher has identified a fossil skull found near the Missouri River six miles from Jefferson City as that of an ice age bison.

The rare find is the top half of a skull belonging to a female Bison antiquus, said Lee Lyman, chairman of Missouri's Anthropology Department. An expert on ancient bison at Douglas College in British Columbia, Canada, verified the identification.

Bison antiquus eventually evolved into the modern bison, which haven't lived in Missouri for the last 1,000 years. Radiocarbon dating shows the skull is between 13,500 and 14,000 years old.

Kenny Bassett, a 49-year-old pipe fitter at the University of Missouri-Columbia, found the specimen in 1995 while trolling his usual artifact-hunting spot with a friend.

"We found it just laying there in the sandbar," Basset, a lifelong fossil hunter, said. "We took it home thinking it might have just been oxen, so I kept it with that in mind for quite a few years."

Then Bassett read about an O'Fallon woman who found a complete Bison antiquus skull along the Missouri River last year. The article mentioned Lyman, and Bassett decided to show him the find.

Lyman kept the skull for about two months to conduct research. He has submitted a paper with his findings for publication.

The specimen measures 32 inches across and includes the brain case, both horns, and the tops of both eye sockets. By comparison, modern bison have skulls about 24 inches across and have shorter horns that project toward the back of the skull.

Lyman and Bassett said floods in 1993 and 1995 probably shifted the riverbanks, revealing bones and artifacts that had been buried under the earth. Lyman said he expects more things to gradually turn up.

John Biermann, a resource interpreter for the Mastodon State Historic Site, said the bones could further research about climatic patterns, including whether the greenhouse effect is a modern phenomenon caused by burning fossil fuels or part of a historic pattern of rapid cooling and warming that could have caused extinction for ancient species.

"What we're learning about the extinction process of these megafauna and how climatic changes occurred helps us put into perspective what's going on today," Biermann said.

Megafauna include large, extinct animals such as mammoths, mastodons, beavers the size of black bears and giant ground sloths. They all disappeared at the end of the last ice age, known as the Pleistocene Epoch.

The Pleistocene Epoch started about 2 million years ago and ended about 10,000 years ago, when glacial ice retreated to Antarctica and Greenland.