PHOTOS BY GARRY BRANDENBURG Lots of stories begin with these words: "A long time ago...in a land far away." Yes, it is true for this cold case, to learn how this bison, specifically Bison priscus, was killed by an American Lion. The location was near what is now the City of Fairbanks, Alaska. The find was made during the summer of 1979. Walter and Ruth Roman and their sons were working at their placer mine. Excavations uncovered the remains of an ancient bison frozen in the soil. The specimen was reported to University of Alaska professor Dr. R. Dale Guthrie. Its preservation process turned the hide a blueish color, and thus the publicity associated with this animal became affectionately known as Blue Babe. Today's images illustrate how bison of long ago traversed from Siberia over dry land connections to Alaska, and this steppe bison happened to become a kill and a meal for an American Lion. My other image today is also of a Steppe Bison skull cap and horn cores, also from Alaska, but it is on display at Rapid City, S.D.'s School of Mines museum, along with many other extinct bison species.

The natural history of wildlife includes many forms which are now extinct in North America, and is revealed in part by the glacial history of our continent. If we turn back the geologic clock to a time frame at least 100,000 years ago to maybe as late as just 10,000 years ago, a long cold glacial ice cap had accumulated over most of Canada and great portions of Alaska.

So much snow had to fall over thousands of years of time in order for those snow layers to grow to great depths, creating glaciers of immense weight. As the ice got thicker, its base layers under intense pressure molded and flowed like thick molasses, lubricating and allowing the ice to move southward.

As continental glaciers grow, sea levels lower significantly as their waters are now locked up in snow and ice. Lower sea levels exposed a land bridge between Siberia and Alaska.

Animals used this pathway to exploit new environments and new habitats. Later on toward the end of the Wisconsinan Ice Age, people followed from Asia to populate the land, following the animals because the animals were people’s food sources.

In the meantime, in parts of Alaska, not all the land was covered with snow and ice. Great expanses of exposed land grew grasses, the steppes as they are now known, where grazing animals could find forage to sustain their huge bodies.

Among the animals crossing into Alaska were ancient forms of bison, one being the Steppe Bison, along with mastodons, mammoths, camels, giant sloths, dire wolves, musk ox, and even a lion species, the American Lion, plus many more critters. As the North American continent had to endure those long episodes of glacial cold conditions and ice, wildlife adaptations were allowed to run their courses. Some made it, like our modern day bison.

Other species became extinct. The steppe bison is one species that may have lived up to about 10,000 years ago before it could no longer adapt to a naturally warming world and new vegetation types.

Going back to today’s image of the preserved Blue Bison now on display at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, I was there during early June of this year. I specifically wanted to go to the Museum of the North, to see for myself and take time to marvel at all the excellent displays inside this Class A facility.

In the hall specifically dedicated to Alaska, a series of displays exhibit all things related to various regions of Alaska. Since this state is so large, and its geographic and environmental habitats are so vast, region by region is represented by their own unique artifacts and wildlife types.

One of the displays is the Blue Bison, (Bison priscus), as it was found frozen in the placer mine soils near Fairbanks. The descriptive labels on the display case tell of several large mammals that roamed interior Alaska during the Wisconsinan glacial period.

Incidentally, similar species of this bison have been found across Eurasia to Spain and France. Paleolithic man artists drew bison representations on cave walls.

The bison in the museum display case died about 36,000 years ago. The age was determined by carbon dating and the half-life of various mineral elements. This animal’s underfur and the remains of summer fat reveal that it died in early winter.

Claw marks on the rear of the carcass and tooth punctures in the skin indicate that the bison was killed by an American lion (Panthera leo atrox). The bison died with all four feet under it, as bison still do today when caught by predators.

The lion opened the body from the side and exposed vertebrae and upper limbs. The muscles of these areas were then eaten away allowing the bones to be pulled away and scavenged.

The now extinct American Lion probably resembled its cousin the African Lion, except the American version was much larger. A skull of an adult American Lion was part of this display to contrast its size and to denote its teeth, jaw size and other details that indicate bite marks consistent with marks on the bison hide.

Soon after the kill had been made, the carcass was rapidly covered with silt. There was some continuing additional deterioration of the bison Dr. Guthrie called “just a slight decomposition,” enough to account for the loss of hair from the skin. Soon the entire body was again covered with silty soils and became frozen permanently.

Fast forward 36,000 years to 1979.

After its discovery, the entire animal was moved to a large freezer until Eirik Granqvist of the Zoological Museum in Helsinki performed taxidermy work in 1984. The bones and skull were removed from the skin, and they are now housed in the research collection at the University of Fairbanks Alaska (UAF).

The skin was chemically treated to stabilize its shape and to prevent deterioration and insect damage. Measurements from the carcass, bones and skin were used to construct a mannequin over which the treated hide was fixed, essentially the way that taxidermists mount large trophy animals. The preservation of this bison is excellent, leaving red meat and white bones intact. Circumstances allowing for both the long and excellent preservation and subsequent discovery of large mammals is rare. Only two other discoveries from permafrost have been reconstructed and put on display in the world: one is a juvenile mammoth and an adult mammoth, both now at the Zoological Museum in Leningrad.

A bit of science behind why the bluish color to this bison goes like this: Phosphorus in the animal tissue reacted with iron in the soil to produce a mineral called vivanite, which became brilliant blue when it was exposed to air. That is how this steppe bison became known as the Blue Bison.

It is an amazing thing to learn about wildlife of long ago, and being able to use science to put pieces of a life puzzle together to know when and how the Blue Bison lived, what it ate, and how in this case it died, and who did it. Clues like this do not happen often.

Science followed the evidence to help paint a word picture today that enables anyone to learn about wildlife in a land far away and a long time ago, and this awesome display at UAF offers proof of those historic moments from past glacial times.

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If you take a drive to Green Castle Recreation Area, located one mile south of Ferguson, the Marshall County Conservation Board has an eight acre fenced enclosure holding four modern day bison. This bison species is smaller than several of its extinct cousins.

But if you happen to be allowed to see the bull bison in this pasture, try to visualize an animal about 10 percent larger. Large animals are able to retain body heat more efficiently so winter snows and cold are not an issue of this critter.

Nature has provided bison with a long heritage of noteworthy lineages to help it survive.

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On the flight home from Fairbanks, Alaska, our route of flight was over the snow-clad and glacier covered mountains of southeast Alaska and British Columbia toward Seattle. I had a window seat.

I was glued to the views outside as I studied the landscapes from 33,000 feet. It was awesome to see rivers of ice (glaciers) doing their thing as they hugged the mountain valleys. From Seattle to Chicago, our daytime clear weather route traversed the scablands of eastern Washington State, an eroded surface caused by numerous huge water releases from Glacial Lake Missoula waters breaking through glacial ice dams — repeatedly — during Wisconsinan ice episodes.

Then over Idaho, Montana’s rocky mountains, and the fertile grasslands of eastern Montana, North Dakota and over South Dakota, my window seat offered more study time of past glacial landscapes, many areas dotted with small to large lakes. I could read the land surface to know where glacial ice had once passed.

I could see where glacial melt waters formed large river channels that were once huge and now held only a trickle of water comparatively speaking. I was able to identify cities and places I have driven across in times past. Our plane paralleled the Minnesota River, so even more landscape features revealed themselves to me.

Soon the mighty Mississippi River was beneath the plane, and its wide forested floodplain lands told their own story of vast quantities of glacial melt water cutting deep into glacial till and bedrock layers. Soon Wisconsin hills revealed their dendritic patterns of drainage. Over Lake Michigan, the airliner flew well over this glacially cut body of water as we were on downwind, base and final to land in Chicago’s O’Hare airport.

I am glad the flight home was during daylight hours. To do so at night would have been a very dull endurance test.

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Garry Brandenburg is the retired director of the Marshall County Conservation Board. He is a graduate of Iowa State University with a BS degree in Fish & Wildlife Biology.

Contact him at:

P.O. Box 96

Albion, IA 50005