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If bison had 9 lives, Sparky has used up eight of them. This lucky bison is a resident at the Neal Smith National Wildlife Refuge in Iowa and managed to survive being struck by lightning in 2013. According to a press release from the U.S. Department of Interior, Sparky's prognosis wasn't good and they weren't sure he would survive. "But he proved us wrong!"

Visitors to Yellowstone Park seem to be having trouble taking in the message that it's not a good idea to get too close to the wild bison that roam the wilderness. The latest person to find out the hard way is a 43-year-old Mississippi woman who tried to take a selfie with one of the hairy beasts near a trail on Tuesday. She and her daughter turned their backs to the bison, which was about 6 yards away, to take a photo with it, according to the National Park Service. "They heard the bison's footsteps moving toward them and started...

A stretch of floodplain in northwestern Oklahoma, already known for its profusion of prehistoric hunting sites, has turned up new find: a scatter of butchered bison bones dating back nearly 11,500 years -- extending the evidence of bison hunting in the area by centuries, archaeologists say... Together, these artifacts lend new depth to the already ample record of ancient hunts -- including three bison-kill sites that are even older -- in a region of the southern Plains known as the Beaver River complex... The latest find was made on a narrow bench of land between two arroyos by Carlson's colleague,...

To Hell with AP.

The sheer size and wildness of Yellowstone National Park's signature bison provide a magnificent subject for camera-toting tourists. But officials caution visitors not to come within 25 yards of the animals, noting that they are unpredictable and able to sprint three times faster than people can run. A 62-year-old Australian man who ventured to within 3 to 5 feet of one bison was seriously injured Tuesday when the animal charged and tossed him into the air several times, park officials said in a statement. This is the second such incident within weeks. A 16-year-old Taiwanese exchange student was gored by...

All 15 bison that roamed across a section of town for the past several hours were shot and killed by family members who owned the animals Friday. The center of attention was at a creek off of Willowbrook Avenue as authorities tried to round up the herd that escaped from a farm in Rensselaer County, crossed the Hudson River and bolted across the state Thruway. One of the hunters — "hired guns" — appeared to have a heated exchange with Albany County Sheriff Craig Apple after the gunfire started and was taken into custody. Apple said he was concerned about...

Recent scientific findings date their arrival earlier than ever thought, sparking hot debate among archaeologists For much of its length, the slow-moving Aucilla River in northern Florida flows underground, tunneling through bedrock limestone. But here and there it surfaces, and preserved in those inky ponds lie secrets of the first Americans.For years adventurous divers had hunted fossils and artifacts in the sinkholes of the Aucilla about an hour east of Tallahassee. They found stone arrowheads and the bones of extinct mammals such as mammoth, mastodon and the American ice age horse.Then, in the 1980s, archaeologists from the Florida Museum of...

Many large charismatic mammals went extinct at the end of the Ice Age (approx 11,000 years ago), including the Steppe bison, Bison priscus. A recent find in Eastern Siberia has uncovered one of these bison, literally, frozen in time. The most complete frozen mummy of the Steppe bison yet known, dated to 9,300 years before present, was recently uncovered in the Yana-Indigirka Lowland and a necropsy was performed to learn about how this animal lived and died at the end of the Ice Age. The Yukagir bison mummy, as it is named, has a complete brain, heart, blood vessels and...

For the first time in three decades, paleontologists are about to revisit one of North America's most remarkable troves of ancient fossils: The bones of tens of thousands of animals piled at the bottom of a sinkhole-type cave. Natural Trap Cave in Wyoming is 85 feet (25 meters) deep and almost impossible to see until you're standing right next to it. Over tens of thousands of years, many, many animals—including now-extinct mammoths, short-faced bears, American lions and American cheetahs—shared the misfortune of not noticing the 15-foot-wide (4 meters) opening until they were plunging to their deaths. Now, the U.S. Bureau...

The cave is cool and damp -- prefect for preserving prehistoric remains, Meachen says. "It's like a refrigerator in there, and probably has been for 20,000 years," she said. "Some of the bones we're finding there have collagen in them. That is where you could get the ancient DNA." The scientists saw bones falling out of a part of the cave, and decided to start digging there. "That was the fossil layer," she said. "There is so much to dig. We have two more years for funding that we can be out there, so we are going to try to...

(Reuters) - Scientists excavating an ancient Wyoming sinkhole containing a rare trove of fossils of Ice Age mammals have unearthed hundreds of bones of such prehistoric animals as American cheetahs, a paleontologist said on Friday. The two-week dig by an international team of researchers led by Des Moines University paleontologist Julie Meachen marked the first exploration of Natural Trap Cave at the base of the Bighorn Mountains in north-central Wyoming since its initial discovery in the 1970s. Meachen said the extensive excavation that began late last month uncovered roughly 200 large bones of animals like horses that roamed North America...

Too often, Janet and LeRoy Peterson have heard the tell-tale sounds of screeching tires and, soon after, a rap on their door. Another motorist has just discovered that the natural terrain around their river valley home makes a natural funnel for deer, the Petersons told members of the Indian History Hunters at a Nov. 4 meeting in Willmar. Some 20 years ago, the Petersons discovered that Minnesota's first inhabitants had this all figured out at least 7,000 years before the first car-deer crash. Except it wasn't 100- to 200-pound whitetail deer that brought Minnesota's first people to the Peterson's three-acre...

A number of bloggers are posting video of animals fleeing the Yellowstone Park this week. Some believe this may be a sign of an imminent volcano eruption. [video] The Epoch Times reported: A number of bloggers are posting videos that show bison and other animals allegedly leaving Yellowstone National Park, prompting theories that as earthquakes ramp up the seismic activity will set off the Yellowstone supervolcano. Two of the main bloggers behind the discussion stress that there’s no way to know when the supervolcano will go off but note that the 4.8 magnitude earthquake that hit on March 30 seemed...

Sweet !!!

Exclusive pictures show autopsy on a four year old bison preserved in ice since ancient times. The autopsy, conducted on 27 February 2014, is understood to be the first in the world on a 9,000 bison, and it could provide vital scientific information. The creature was found in exceptional condition in July 2011 by Yukagir community members in the Sakha Republic, also known as Yakutia, where mammoth remains were also found. This bison, dating from 9,000 years ago, was located on the shore of a lake in the north of Ust-Yana district. The body became visible after a part of...

They are pictures which show exactly why it isn't wise to taunt animals which are much larger and more powerful that you. When this enormous one-ton bison was going about its daily basis in Antelope Island State Park in Utah, a rather foolish man decided it would be a good idea to provoke it.

LONG BEACH (CBS SF) – Speaking from the prestigious TED Conference in Long Beach Wednesday, Sausalito activist Stewart Brand said scientists are developing the ability to reassemble an extinct animal’s genome, and even recreate the animal itself. Brand, who gained fame after he campaigned to have the original NASA space photos of earth published, and subsequently created the Whole Earth Catalog, said Wednesday that “de-extinction” could be used to help restore organisms and habitats damaged human activity, according to a report in the Marin Independent Journal. A team of Harvard geneticists are currently working to bring back the passenger pigeon,...

For the first time since the 18th century, the European bison is returning to Germany to live in the wild. The wisent, as it is also known, has been brought to the country by a famous prince. Although the creatures' survival is uncertain, the project has already attracted considerable attention. Info With nothing but spruce trees for entire square kilometers at a time, this managed forest isn't exactly what you would call a wilderness. Nevertheless, the forest, together with its ponds and meadows, provides shelter to many a rare species. In the forest surrounding the town of Bad Berleburg, on...

Yellowstone National Park wolf project leader Doug Smith snapped this photo last Friday, while tracking some of the park's wolf packs from the air. Smith spotted a dead bull bison in the park's Hayden Valley, an apparent victim of a nasty encounter with another bull bison during the herd's annual rut. As you can see, a very large grizzly bear has claimed the bison carcass as his own. What you can't see, according to Smith, is the Canyon wolf pack lurking some 50 yards behind the grizzly, patiently waiting its turn on the carcass. Smith says as his pilot circled...

Contact: Joel Schwarz joels@u.washington.edu 206-543-2580 University of Washington Evidence acquits Clovis people of ancient killings, archaeologists say Archaeologists have uncovered another piece of evidence that seems to exonerate some of the earliest humans in North America of charges of exterminating 35 genera of Pleistocene epoch mammals. The Clovis people, who roamed large portions of North America 10,800 to 11,500 years ago and left behind highly distinctive and deadly fluted spear points, have been implicated in the exterminations by some scientists. Now researchers from the University of Washington and Southern Methodist University who examined evidence from all suggested Clovis-age killing sites...