Heads, Hides, and Horns: The Compleat Buffalo Book

THE BISON AND THE BLOW FLY: USING PUPARIA OF THE BLACK BLOW FLY (PHORMIA REGINA: DIPTERA, CALLIPHORIDAE) TO CONSTRAIN THE SEASON OF DEATH AND TAPHONOMIC HISTORY OF AN EARLY HISTORIC-AGE BISON, CARSON CITY, NEVADA, USA

“…6)-is an unlikely posture for a drowned animal; due to rigor mortis, a drowned bison would be more likely to have all of its legs projecting perpendicular to the axis of the body, and the animal would most likely be lying on its side; (3) some bison-hunting Native Americans are known to typically place a bison on its stomach prior to skinning and butchering, for the purpose of harvesting the highly desirable hump meat and to facilitate removal of the hide by cutting down the mid-dorsal line and peeling it back, also providing a clean surface on which to place the meat (Fig. 6) (Dibble and Lorrain 1968); (4) the absence of the terminal phalanx (the hoof phalanx) on the left foreleg strongly suggests it was removed by a human at the time the animal was being skinned; various groups of Native Americans are known to have used hooves in a wide range of ways, including for glue, rattles, spoons, cups, ladles, fire carriers, toys, and rituals (Barsness 1985;Maloney 2011); (5) a small number of thoracic and lumbar vertebrae suggests that the animal's dorsal region was not completely buried, leaving those bones exposed; (6) the absence of caudal (tail) vertebrae supports the interpretation that the animal was skinned prior to its burial by floodplain sediments; when skinning a bison, at least some Native American groups typically removed the tail with the skin (Barsness 1985). By the time the flood waters and overbank sediments arrived, the carcass was probably a skinless, butchered skeleton, which would explain why it did not float away.…”