Can Bison Replace Beef?

By the close of the Ice age around 10,000 years ago, the savannahs of perennial grasses across North America were the largest on earth rivalling African savannahs both in size and the range of wild animals (the grassland steppes in Eurasia though large die back in winter). There were mastodon elephants, mammoths, rhinos, sabre toothed tigers, American cheetahs, dire wolves, horses, camels, llamas, giant short faced bears, giant beavers and enormous birds of prey. The largest of these mammals probably attained ten tonnes. No one knows exactly why this striking diversity disappeared almost abruptly around that time. It seems likely that the cause is at least partly anthropogenic. Some scientists are active proponents of this disputed Overkill hypothesis.

The Pleistocene megafauna included two species of bison, of which the sole survivor is now the American bison (Bison bison), a poor substitute in size for its giant antecedents. At around one tonne, the American bison is North America’s largest mammal. Similarly, its relative, the “European” bison remains temperate Eurasia’s largest mammal. The ancestors of the bison to the Americas came from Asia. Indeed, a frozen body of the ancestral relative has been found. These animals had longer horns than the present form and are believed to have gathered in smaller herds, being more aggressive. Human hunting has been strongly implicated in the evolution of the modern bison – some of its appearance and tendency to form large herds was probably selected for by human hunters.