Scientists from the Southern Federal University, the Paleontological Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the Institute of Plant and Animal Ecology of the Ural Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the Crimean Federal University and the Southern Scientific Center of the Russian Academy of Sciences have described a new species of ancient bison, the remains of which were discovered in the Tavrida cave in Crimea. The animal, named Bison (Eobison) constantini, lived on the peninsula 1.8–1.6 million years ago, during the Early Pleistocene epoch. The Crimean form differs from other early bison in the structure of horn rods and dentition.

Vadim Titov, Associate Professor of the Department of Zoology at the SFedU Academy of Biology and Medicine, head of the Laboratory of Paleogeography at the UNC RAS, who personally participated in the excavations, said that at the moment about seventy species of large and small animals have been identified and described from the cave.

"During the excavations of this unique cave, a large number of remains of ancient animals that lived on the territory of the Crimean Peninsula 1.8–1.6 million years ago were obtained. The bones of bison are among the most numerous in the collection, since these massive ungulates quite often became objects of hyenas' meals, which were the main "suppliers" of bones to the cave that served as their lair," says Vadim Titov.

It was the hyenas who stole the carcasses of bison into their lair that provided paleontologists with rich material. As a result, the bones ended up in an enclosed space, where they were preserved for more than a million years.

It was only when a sufficient amount of diagnostic material had been collected that the researchers were able to begin describing it. During the processing, the differences between the Crimean form and other known bison species became clear.

"When describing and comparing the bones of this animal, it turned out that this Crimean form of bison has certain differences in the structure of horn rods and teeth from other species known to science. The description of new taxa of ancient organisms is the work of paleontologists. It is estimated that at the moment, science knows less than one percent of the organisms that have existed on our planet for 3.8 billion years. Therefore, we have to describe many more new species," added Vadim Titov.

The specific name Bison constantini was proposed by the first co-author of the article, Innessa Anatolyevna Vislobokova, Doctor of Biological Sciences, from the Paleontological Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Konstantin Konstantinovich Fleurov is a famous Soviet paleontologist who studied ancient artiodactyls, including bison. His surname has already been imprinted in the species names of several deer and polorhynchus.

There were plenty of predators in that era —large hyenas, several species of saber-toothed cats, and wolves. So the short horns of this bison are not a sign of the absence of enemies. The early forms of bison in the early Pleistocene almost all had short horns, and it was only during evolution that the horns and overall size of bison increased.

In principle, the diet of Konstantin the bison was not much different from that of modern bison, bison and ordinary cows. The food was based on grassy vegetation. The height of the crown of his teeth was slightly less than that of other bison species, but the habitat conditions were different then.

"At that time, the so-called savanna-like landscapes prevailed, close to our forest-steppes. There was less coarse grassy vegetation typical of the steppes, and there were fewer abrasive particles on it that accelerate tooth erasure," says Vadim Titov.

The climate in Crimea 1.8–1.6 million years ago was warmer and milder than today, there were no snowy winters. The association of animals from the Taurida cave was very rich. The most widespread hyena hunting targets were ostriches, southern elephants, two-horned Stephanorhinus rhinoceroses, peculiar elasmotherium rhinoceroses, horses, giant camels, several species of deer, large and small antelopes, including hornbills. In general, the faunal complex resembled a community of modern African savannahs, although there were no giraffes in Crimea at that time.

Theoretically, Constantine's bison could have caught the ancient people. The remains of early representatives of the genus Homo, starting from two million years ago, are known in the North Caucasus. These were representatives of the first wave of humans, Homo erectus or Homo ergaster, who came out of Africa and began to spread across Eurasia. However, the remains of these ancient people have not yet been found on the territory of Crimea.

So far, there is no evidence of the existence of this species of bison outside the Crimea. At that time, other bison species lived in the Black Sea region, the Azov Sea region and the Caucasus.

The skeletal remains of bison, as well as other animals from this location, will be kept in museum collections pending new research. The published publication is only the first stage of the description. Modern methods make it possible to accurately reconstruct the lifestyle, nutritional characteristics and other characteristics of ancient animals. But paleogenetics is powerless in this case.

"DNA is not preserved in such ancient bones. In principle, there are known cases of obtaining DNA fragments from elephant teeth about a million years old, but those finds were made in the permafrost zone," explains Vadim Titov.

Paleontological finds will be stored in the collections of the Tavrida Cave Cave speleological complex in Simferopol, as well as at the Paleontological Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow.