516 PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL MUSEUM. vol.48. 



goid processes relatively short. Foramen ovale confluent with the 

 foramen lacerum medius. Forehead in front of horn cores narrower 

 than the skull across the zygomatic arches. 



Type. — Some portions of the rear of the skull and a part of the 

 right ramus of the lower jaw containing the last premolar and the 

 anterior two molars. Found in Huron County, Ohio. 



The writer received for examination, on May 2, 1914, from Hon. 

 C. H. Gallup, of Norwalk, Ohio, a small package of fossil bones 

 which had belonged to some bovine animal. These had been found 

 in a tamarack swamp at some place not yet exactly ascertained in 

 Huron County, Ohio. In the same swamp had been discovered 

 bones of a megalonyx, and in the course of a search for other 

 parts of the skeleton of this animal those of the bovine had been 

 met with. A piece of soil inclosing the bones was sent with them, 

 and it is found to be composed of a mixture of vegetable matter and 

 fine mineral materials. The bones consist of a fragment of the right 

 side of the skull bearing the pedestal of the horn core, another frag- 

 ment showing the axial region, the left glenoid fossa, etc., and a 

 part of the right ramus of the lower jaw, with some teeth. A study 

 of the specimen shows that they belonged to a hitherto undescribed 

 species of the genus Bison. The writer proposes to give it the name 

 Bison sylvestris. 



The piece of skull (pi. 30, fig. 1) which presents the pedestal of the 

 right horn core is 91 mm. in its greatest dimension. It consists of a 

 triangular piece of the frontal, a portion of the parietal forming the 

 side wall of the temporal fossa, and a part of the occiput. The inte- 

 rior of this mass is full of air cells, but these hardly extended beyond 

 the base of the pedestal. The pedestal itself is placed well in front 

 of the occipital crest, so that we may be sure that the animal was not 

 a species of Bos. 



Through some means the pedestal has been broken or gnawed or 

 eroded off so as to be wedge shaped at the extremity. No part of the 

 horn-core itself appears. The pedestal has a diameter of 25 mm. 

 only; hence the horn-core and the horn were evidently very small. 

 It seems pretty certain that the animal was a female. The horn-core 

 was probably directed somewhat upward, as well as outward. It 

 appears also to have started out at right angles, or nearly so, with the 

 median plane of the skull, as in Bison antiquus. In other species of 

 American bison, recent and fossil, the horn-cores are directed outward 

 and somewhat backward. The parietal of the specimen under consid- 

 eration runs forward from the rear of the temporal fossa a distance 

 of 66mm., nearly the same as in the skull of the jersey cow with 

 which it is compared. The suture between the frontal and the parietal 

 extends forward weir in front of the pedestal of the horn-core, then 

 turns downward so as to approach rather rapidly the parieto- 



