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Brahegatan 10
BOX 5038
114 37 Stockholm
All auctions / Ethnographic / Ice Age Steppe Bison Horn Sheath Tip, Bison priscus, Alaskan Permafrost
North America, Northwestern United States, Alaska, Pleistocene. A sweeping crescent of Ice Age keratin, the tip of a horn sheath from Bison priscus, the steppe bison that grazed the mammoth steppe of Beringia. Keratin almost never survives deep time; this one did, naturally mummified in Alaskan permafrost, where extreme cold arrested the decay that ordinarily leaves only the bony horn core. The surface preserves the layered growth striations of the living animal, split and frayed along the exfoliating outer laminae, weathered to bands of bone white, umber, and charcoal. The broad open curve and lateral flare are diagnostic of the species, whose horn spread far exceeded that of the modern American bison. Presented on an included custom stand. Bison priscus ranged across the northern hemisphere from western Europe through Siberia and, by way of the Bering land bridge, into Alaska and the Yukon, arriving in North America roughly 200,000 years ago. It was the dominant large grazer of the Beringian mammoth steppe, hunted by lion, short-faced bear, and eventually humans, and it stood taller and carried a markedly wider horn span than Bison bison, its surviving descendant. Its extinction in North America came at the close of the Pleistocene, as the steppe grasslands gave way to tundra and boreal forest. Alaskan permafrost preserves what almost no other depositional setting can. Frozen ground halts bacterial breakdown, so hair, hide, hoof, and horn sheath survive alongside bone, yielding specimens such as the celebrated frozen bison carcasses recovered from Alaskan placer mining cuts. Soft tissue of this kind is not fossilized in the mineralized sense; it is original organic material, which is what makes a surviving keratin sheath considerably scarcer than the bone that once filled it. Item # 205061
Estimate:$500
To the auctionView all items fromArtemis Fine ArtsorEthnographic
Estimate:
$500
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