Bison Antiquus Or Bison Occidentalis

[Carolyn]

I have been told my skull and assorted parts, are bison antiquus or Bison Occidentalis and a conservation

officer/museum curator..told me trasnsitional. Does anyone know how to find out? I was told it was about the distance between the horns tip to tip, mine are at an odd distance. Then I got to wondering, what if my partial skulls were from a juvenile bison. Can anyone help?

[Harry Pristis]

I have been told my skull and assorted parts, are bison antiquus or Bison Occidentalis and a conservation

officer/museum curator..told me trasnsitional. Does anyone know how to find out? I was told it was about the distance between the horns tip to tip, mine are at an odd distance. Then I got to wondering, what if my partial skulls were from a juvenile bison. Can anyone help?

Here, Carolyn, try this:

[Carolyn]

Here, Carolyn, try this:

Thank you sooooo much...Everytime I would ask local museum people, university professors, or conservation

people, I would get a different answer.

I had the hardest time trying to find out how to take care of everything. Everyone kept giving me glue or sealant info. I was just asking how to keep them from drying out. Finally someone in the paleontology department at one of the universities explained the procedure on drying the skulls and bones out slowly so as not to cause damage. The chart helps immensely.

[tracer]

i think one reason you've been having trouble getting a definitive answer might be because people don't want to give it, believing it isn't appropriate based on the fossil and the amount of info available. there is a lot of variation even within a species. there is overlap between species in the dimensional chart. different populations of animals separated geographically trend apart and most of how they get classified, in my opinion, depends on whether a "lumper" gets to them before a "splitter" does. and whether anyone is itching to stand up a new species for whatever reason at the moment.

i personally prefer uncertainty to inaccuracy. for that reason, i just call some of my stuff "bovid" and "proboscidean" and some is even just forever to be called "pleistocene megafaunal bone".

[Fruitbat]

Both Bison occidentalis and B. antiquus are considered to be part of the "medium horned" complex and there is some overlap in simple biometrics like horn core length and diameter. The main character that some researchers (Apland and Harington, 1994; McDonald, 1981; Shackleton and Hills, 1977; Skinner and Kaisen, 1947) use to differentiate between these two taxa is that the horn cores of B. occidentalis (and Bison priscus - one of the "long horned" complex) have a discernable backward twist, often behind the occipital plane of the cranium while the horn cores of B. antiquus tend to be perpendicular to the main axis of the skull.

Maybe this will help.

-Joe

Oh...by the way...McDonald, in his 1981 North American Bison. Their classification and evolution actually considered Bison occidentalis to be a subspecies of B. antiquus. He used the classification of Bison antiquus antiquus and Bison antiquus occidentalis rather than maintaining the two as separate species.

Edited September 27, 2010 by Fruitbat

[Carolyn]

Both Bison occidentalis and B. antiquus are considered to be part of the "medium horned" complex and there is some overlap in simple biometrics like horn core length and diameter. The main character that some researchers (Apland and Harington, 1994; McDonald, 1981; Shackleton and Hills, 1977; Skinner and Kaisen, 1947) use to differentiate between these two taxa is that the horn cores of B. occidentalis (and Bison priscus - one of the "long horned" complex) have a discernable backward twist, often behind the occipital plane of the cranium while the horn cores of B. antiquus tend to be perpendicular to the main axis of the skull.

Maybe this will help.

-Joe

Oh...by the way...McDonald, in his 1981 North American Bison. Their classification and evolution actually considered Bison occidentalis to be a subspecies of B. antiquus. He used the classification of Bison antiquus antiquus and Bison antiquus occidentalis rather than maintaining the two as separate species.

Thank you for your help. I believe ours would be classified as Bison antiquus occidentalis. Hopefully we can just take everything to a local university that does identification. soon..so soon our recent torrential rains should be bringing out even more.Everything was found in 2visits same place. Thanks to everyone for your help. It has been great looking at galleries. So many things that I didn't pick up.I will now.