9,000 Year Old Bison Found Frozen In Time

For 10,000 years, a bison mummy has been under frozen ground.

In 2011, the Yukagir tribe discovered the remains of an extinct ancestor of the modern bison.  Modern bison are still around today.  This type of bison was called the steppe bison or the Bison priscus.  The steppe bison was almost perfectly preserved and it was transported to the Yukagir Academy of Sciences in Siberia.  Researchers made plans to do an autopsy on the animal.  

There has been several findings of steppe bison, but why is this finding so important?  No other steppe bison has been so well preserved.  All of the internal organs were almost completely in tact.  When you normally find a mummy, it is partially eaten or they are almost complete carcasses.  

  Researchers think the bison died at about four years old.  The researchers noticed that there wasn't that much fat around the bisons abdomen which meant that the bison most likely died because of starvation.  Other than the missing layer of fat, the animal was pretty well preserved.  The bison was so well preserved that they were able to get tissue from each of the organs.

Something else you would really expect to be preserved well is the bisons brain!  The brain was removed for further study.

I think that this is a very cool article and I never really thought that an animal that is 10,000 years old is still preserved.

Written By: Claire P.