Bison Latifrons, Leidy. 19 



BISON LATIFRONS— LEIDY. 



By Horace P. Smith, 



Custodian Cincinnati Society of Natural History. 



(Read December 7, 1886.) 



Plate I. 



Fossil remains of extinct species of ox have been found quite 

 generally distributed throughout the United States, and accounts 

 of these have been published as far back as the year 1803. These 

 remains has been fragmentary and though quite numerous, their 

 character has been such that the identification of species has been 

 attended with much difficulty and confusion. 



It is due to the earnest labors of Dr. Leidy that order has been 

 brought about and questions of identity in most cases decided. In 

 the Philosophical Magazine for 1803, Mr. Rembrandt Peale an- 

 nounced the first distinct species of fossil extinct American ox, to 

 which he gave the name Great Indian Buffalo. 



This species was established upon a fragment of cranium with 

 a portion of the horn core attached, found in the bed of a creek 

 emptying into the Ohio twelve or fourteen miles above Big Bone 

 Lick, Ky. 



This fragment was presented to the Philosophical Society by 

 Dr. Samuel Brown, of Kentucky, and is now deposited m the mu- 

 seum of the Academy of Natural Sciences, Philadelphia. 



A cast of the specimen was sent to Cuvier, who considered it 

 as belonging to the same species as Aurochs, and is so described by 

 him in the Annals of the Museum of Paris. Dr. Harlan afterwards 

 gave it the name Bos latifrons, or broad-headed ox. At the meet- 

 ing of the Academy of Natural Sciences, July 6, 1852, Dr. Leidy 

 called attention to this fragment, which he considered as belonging 

 tr a species of bison and gave it the name Bison latifrons. * 



It was upon this specimen that the species was first established 

 by Dr. Leidy, and since, numerous fragments which had been de- 

 scribed by various authors, under as many different names, have 

 been referred to this species, which were the largest of our extinct 

 American oxen.f 



The following measurements are given by Dr. Leidy in his 

 description of this specimen in "Memoir on Extinct Species of 



*Proc. Ac. Nat. Sc. 1852, 117. 



•j-Jour, Ac. Nat. Sc. vol. vii Ser. ii p. 37^. 



