Steppe bison


The steppe bison or steppe wisent is an extinct species of bison that was once found on the mammoth steppe where its range included British Isles, Europe, Central Asia, Northern to Northeastern Asia, Beringia, and North America, from northwest Canada to Mexico during the Quaternary. This wide distribution is sometimes called the Pleistocene bison belt compared to the Great bison belt The radiocarbon dating of a steppe bison skeleton indicates that it was present 5,400 years ago in Alaska. Three chronological subspecies, Bison priscus priscus, Bison priscus mediator, and Bison priscus gigas, have been suggested.

Evolution

The steppe bison is believed to have evolved from Bison paleosinensis in South Asia, which means the species appeared at roughly the same time and region as the aurochs with which its descendants are sometimes confused. The steppe bison was eventually contemporaneous with the Pleistocene woodland bison and the European bison in Europe, Leptobison in Japan, and the long-horned bison in North America.
The steppe bison became extinct possibly in the middle to the late Holocene, as it was replaced in Europe by the modern European bison, in 2016 thought to be a hybrid between B. priscus and the Bos primigenius,, a premature conclusion based on incomplete lineage sorting, and in America by a sequence of several species culminating in the modern American bison. European cave paintings appear to depict both B. bonasus and B. priscus''.
Resembling the modern bison species, especially the American wood bison, the steppe bison was over 2 m tall at the withers, reaching 900 kg in weight. The tips of the horns were a meter apart, the horns themselves being over half a meter long.

Discoveries

Steppe bison appear in cave art, notably in the Cave of Altamira and Lascaux, and the carving Bison Licking Insect Bite, and have been found in naturally ice-preserved form.
Blue Babe is the 36,000-year-old mummy of a male steppe bison which was discovered north of Fairbanks, Alaska, in July 1979. The mummy was noticed by a gold miner who named the mummy Blue Babe – "Babe" for Paul Bunyan's mythical giant ox, permanently turned blue when he was buried to the horns in a blizzard. Blue Babe is also frequently referenced when talking about scientists eating their own specimens: the research team that was preparing it for permanent display in the University of Alaska Museum removed a portion of the mummy's neck, stewed it, and dined on it to celebrate the accomplishment.
In 2011, a 9,300-year-old mummy was found at Yukagir in Siberia.

Deextinction attempts

A team of Russian and Korean scientists proposed potential deextinction of steppe bison with wood bison in Siberia using cloning techniques, especially with reintroduced herds in Yakutia, Russia.