I had spotted the rock outcropping just south of StorageTek across US 36 some time ago. I though it might be a good place to look for fossils, or at least a nice walk. With the weather being so nice this Autumn, I had promised myself an outdoor lunch/hike. Turned out I got my little adventure in, just in time.

It was surprizingly remote for being next to a major metropolitan highway. Nobody but cattle and prairie dogs have much reason to visit the area. The huge cottonwoods were are golden and rustling in the wind. Once down in the deepest parts of the creek gully, it was quite beautiful. The place is mostly undisturbed except for the stomping of the cattle; their tracks and trails crisscross the ground. There was evidence of high water, flood debris piled snagged and snarled here and there. It is an active little creek.

Low, skinny spots made it easy to jump to the other side. But some places had 15 foot dirt cliffs, eroding as the channel cuts its meandering way though this dry, rolling country. I was thinking this was a great place to find exposed bones that had been buried. I had heard that you could find buffalo bones in the creek banks.

And then I saw it, a bit of knarled whiteness sticking out of the dirt, about 3 feet from the top of a 15 foot cliff. I found a way to cross the creek and upon closer examination, realized I had found some exposed bones - a skull of some sort. I found a stick to dig with, layed down and hung over the steep bank. I could just reach the bones. I happily scraped away for 30 minutes or so, wondering if I'd survive a bank collapse in the bushes, rocks and water below. When I finally pulled it out, I could see it had horns. This was either one of my peaceful cattle friends, or it could be the skull of one of the last wild bison that roamed this area. How would I be able to tell?

I took my prize home that night and searched the internet for some possible clues to help me figure out - steer or bison. Amazingly, I found a site that had photographs of a steer skull and a bison skull. As you can see in the photo above, the skull turned out to be a bison. Notice the upward turned horns, the humped between the horns, and the bulging eye sockets of the bison. The skull is also incredibly thick and heavy.

I've been cleaning it up, loosening the fine sediments that have filled its chambers. And I'm strengthening the old bone by painting it with diluted Elmer's glue (seems appropriate doesn't it). The dilute glue is an emulsion (suspension in water) of polyvinyl acetate and solvent solution. It seapss into the pours and hardens. Dries clear. Believe it or not, dilute Elmer's glue is a consolidant widely used in paleontology to harden sub-fossils. I'm still trying to get the embedded dirt out of the nooks and crannies. Most of the pieces are clean now. Once I get it all prepared I'll be able to cement the pieces together and have a fine specimen of locally extinct wild life.

It really fills my imagination, this old skull. How old could it be? For sure it was roaming near the creek before any paved roads, before fences. Had it migrated far? From Montana maybe, with a huge herd, hunted by bow and arrow or winchester. Did it die in a blizzard, falling into the creek. Or was it swepted into a debris pile by some past flood and buried. The creek's channel may have been diverted by the debris, the creek flowing off in another direction for a long period of time, only to return later to uncover what it had buried.

It's a reminder of what this place was like not so long ago. No malls, roads, cities, traffic. A wild place where buffalo grazed and rested in the shallow gullies. They'd been here since the ice age, a very long time. My, how things have changed.