Phillippe Morin
Northern News Services
Published Monday, September 24, 2007

ARCTIC RED RIVER - Natural history is a really interesting thing.

Thanks to the permafrost of the NWT, there are skeletons out there which have been preserved for thousands of years.

Shane Van Loon said the bison skull was exposed on an eroding hillside. If it is indeed a steppe bison, it might be 20,000-years-old or more, according paleontologists from the Yukon. - photo courtesy of Van Loon family

Some date back to the last ice age and the time of the Woolly Mammoth.

It might seem incredible, but Shane Van Loon believes he's found something that old in Tsiigehtchic.

In early September, the 21-year-old found what appears to be a steppe bison skeleton, which was jutting from some permafrost after a rainstorm.

Van Loon is very excited about the idea of having found a historical artifact.

Even more incredible is the fact the animal's skin and fur were still attached because of the freezing.

While scientists are interested in testing the remains, Van Loon said he wants to keep the skull in Tsiigehtchic, so people of the community can see it.

He spoke with News/North on Sept. 19.

News/North: Can you take us through the day when you found this thing? How did it all start?

Shane Van Loon: It all started when I went for a walk along the bank. I went to check out a slide that had happened while it had rained. I saw some fur and some bone in the bank, stuck in the side. I wasn't too sure what it was - it might have been a burial or something - so I left it alone. I thought I'd let it alone for a couple of days and let it melt out. I went back there after four days and it had slid. All the remains were on the side of the hill, so the first thing I found was the head.

N/N: What did you do when you saw it was a bison?

SVL: I called Alestine Andre and she came over with her husband Itai (Katz). They looked at it and took some pictures. She told me "we have to call some people to come look at this!" I phoned the Heritage Centre (Prince of Wales Northern Heritage Centre in Yellowknife) and they wanted some pictures of it. I got some pictures emailed to them.

NN: When did you learn it could be thousands of years old?

SVL: When I first saw it on the side of the hill, I knew it was something really old, something from long ago. But at first I thought it was just a deer.

N/N: What's amazing is that it's so remarkably well-preserved. I hear there was even fur?

SVL: Oh yes, there was some skin on it, and some fur too. I found a good patch of the skin and a lump of the fur. It also had hooves, a back leg, a spine and a shoulder blade.

N/N: What happens next? What happens to the bones?

SVL: Well, they (experts from Yellowknife) are doing tests on it, and they'll be sending it out for carbon dating. They're going to let me know in six weeks how old it was.

Right now, I still have the remains here and I'll try to get an agreement where it's always mine. They can take it and display it in a museum if they want, but I told them I'd like to keep it here at the school, in Tsiigehtchic.

N/N: Why keep it in Tsiigehtchic?

SVL: What's the point of it going to Yellowknife where my community can't see it? (laughs) It'll be good for the kids too, to know there was stuff like that around here."

A steppe bison is an ancient mammal predating the last ice age. These bison lived during the Pleistocene era, which ended about 10,000 years ago. They lived around the same time as the more famed wooly mammoth.

In 1979, a steppe bison skull was found outside Fairbanks, Alaska. It was radiocarbon dated and found to be 36,000-years-old. Steppe bison were characterized by their large size, slightly larger than the wood bison.

Steppe bison had long curved back horns, large adult males were known to have spreads of nearly a metre between horn points.

Source: Yukon Beringia Interpretive Centre