Animals Before Man 



in Alaska in company witli those of the mam- 

 moth. The brown bears and the wide-horned 

 bison {Bison crassicornis) never passed out of 

 the northwest ; the mountain sheep found the 

 cool climate it needed by following the moun- 

 tain ranges southward ; the slow and lumbering 

 mammoth made the longest journey of all — 

 clear to the Atlantic coast. 



The wide-horned bison was about the size 

 of the common species, but with longer, more 

 flattened horns with a wider outward sweep. 

 This species must have been abundant on the 

 Alaskan tundras, for its bones are found there 

 in numbers, and sometimes even the covering 

 of the horns is preserved. Contemporary with 

 this was another species \&ry similar to the 

 living bison, and very probably its immediate 

 ancestor. Remains of this animal have been 

 found as far east as Kansas, and an almost com- 

 plete skeleton is preserved in the State Uni- 

 versity at Lawrence. At least three other spe- 

 cies of bison flourished during the Pleistocene, 

 the king of them all being the wide-fronted 

 bison, Bisooi latifrons, perhaps the most superb 



260 



