FOSSIL BUFFALO TROPHY Bison priscus Late Pleistocene Dnieper... Lot 5

FOSSIL BUFFALO TROPHY Bison priscus Late Pleistocene Dnieper River, Kamianske, Ukraine H. 25 ½ in - L. 43 ¼ in A beautiful fossil skull cap with impressive, well-preserved horns from an extinct ice age bison. Bison priscus, also known as the steppe bison, inhabited the mammoth steppe in the middle, upper Pleistocene and early part of the Holocene, about 600,000 to 7,500 years ago, and ranged throughout Europe, Central Asia, Northern to Northeastern Asia, Beringia and North America. First described by Bojanus in 1827, it had horns about twice as long as today's bison, was up to 2 meters tall at the withers and could weigh as much as 900 kilograms. Bison priscus had a high hump similar to that of today's bison species, due to the presence of very long neural spines of the dorsal vertebrae, that probably served as anchors for the muscles needed to support the weight of the head. The larger spines and longer scapula gave the bison a long stride for its relatively short legs. This enabled the bison to walk long distances with great efficiency of movement. It appears that the steppe bison went extinct during the last ice age. It is unclear whether hunting by humans contributed significantly to the extinction of this animal. Certainly, the dramatic decrease of suitable habitats and pastures, during the early Holocene in the high Arctic, was a major factor of irreversible population fragmentation and decline leading to the species' extinction. During the late Middle Pleistocene, around 195,000-135,000 years ago, the steppe bison migrated across the Bering land bridge into North America, becoming ancestral to modern American bison. We find it magnificently depicted in the famous Altamira cave paintings in Spain. Its image was perfectly preserved thanks to a landslide that sealed the cave entrance 13,000 years, until the cave was discovered in 1879.