Horse Hide

We attended an exhibit opening at the Beringia Museum last week.

What is Beringia you ask? The area stretching across and between Russia and Alaska/Yukon during the ice age (aka land bridge) was called Beringia. Glaciers never formed in Beringia because the climate was too dry.

Beringia, clothed in the hardy grasses and herbs of the mammoth steppe, was home to the giants of the Ice Age: the mammoth, the giant short-faced bear, the steppe bison, and the scimitar cat. It was also home to some of Mike’s favourite animals – the giant sloth and the giant beaver. At the height of the last great Ice Age, the most successful hunters of all, human beings, entered Beringia from the Siberian steppes, conquering the last frontier for the human species

Beringia vanished with the end of the last Ice Age. But parts of this lost land can still be found in northern and central Yukon, Alaska and Siberia.

During the great Klondike Gold Rush word got out that there was more than just gold in "them there hills"...there were strange things too! Soon scientists from around the world were coming to the Yukon to record and collect spectacular ice age fossils. However, these discoveries were not news to the Yukon First Nations who already knew about the underground world of bones. It was not long before they would have a chance to tell their stories. In the 1960s and 1970s another wave of scientists arrived in the Yukon to document fossils and artifacts from the Old Crow area, including the famous Bluefish Caves. What they found set the scientific world on its head and challenged entrenched ideas about the peopling of the New World.

Ok, so the Beringia period is really, really cool, and we quite enjoy the museum. Last week, they launched a new exhibit around the Yukon Horse, and it is pretty spectacular.

In September 1993, placer miners working a claim in the Klondike found a fossil that has been radiocarbon dated and identified as a 26,000-year-old Yukon horse that once roamed the plains of Eastern Beringia. Discovered by Sam and Lee Olynyk and Ron Toews, the Yukon horse is the best preserved specimen of a mummified, extinct large mammal ever found in Canada. Following scientific analysis on the carcass and hide restoration, the Yukon horse has become the newest member in an impressive collection of exhibits belonging to the Yukon Beringia Interpretive Centre.

The hide is remarkably intact with hair still present, obvious bite marks (from a wolf possibly) and flesh was still present. Part of the intestine was still intact – including dung and remnants from its environment (poppies, sedges, grasses, buttercups, roses, etc) - . Even fossil insects were present! Such a cool find, and so important to understanding our history – this find is like one of 8 in the world that still had flesh, etc. present. Go Yukon!