The
primeval bisons appeared in Eurasia about 800 thousand years ago. In the Ancient Age there
were some different kinds of bisons. The largest of them are the long-horned bisons. They
have appeared 200 - 100 thousand years ago on the territory of Siberia. The body of mature
males reached height more than 2 meters , the length was more than 3 meters and the weight
was 2 — 2,5 tons. The head of bison by sides was crowned with huge, little curved up
horns. A distance between points of bison horns was more than 1 meter. There are known the
finds of bison’s skulls, where a range between points of horns reached 1,8 meters.
Having such sizes and mass bisons nevertheless were very mobile animals. They had a
muscular lean body covered with a rigid brownish wool, and long legs with wide hoofs. The
primeval bison could, probably, develop a velocity till 40-50 km per hour.
Bisons practically did not have natural enemies, and any single predator did not
risk to attack such giant, therefore number of them fast grew. Bisons had been the typical
inhabitants of cold steppes of the Ice Age. The basis of their nutritious ration was made
by dry steppe grass. In cold snow winters bisons grazed on open sites, blown by a wind,
extracting food from under snow, or came into coastal sites of a wood, eating shrubby
sprouts there .
They wandered by huge herds, reaching many hundreds of heads. It is possible to
judge the number of primeval bisons by such fact : in the Ancient Age some part of bisons
was settled on the American continent. They had not died out there, and in the18-th
century their number totalled about 60 million in America. Without fail in the Ancient Age
their number in Eurasia was even more.
With approach of the warming, about 10 thousand years ago, bisons in Siberia begun
to die out and gradually have disappeared. But in some areas of Europe a part of them has
changed and has lived before the Middle Age. There is a judgement, that the
scandinavian vikings and old-russian grand dukes hunted bisons . From nowadays existing
kinds the nearest relatives of primeval bisons are the American and European aurochs. |
This is how primeval bison
approximately looked like
Primeval bison skeleton. Male adult,
found on Novosibirsk
area in 1996.
Lengts 3 m., height 2 m., horns span 1,1 m.,
weight 1,5 t.(life)
Excavation of primeval bison's remains near
Kudelin Kluch village
on Novosibirsk area.
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