2023-06-17 11:04:25
A historical bison skeleton that researchers discovered in December 2020 in a 30-meter-deep shaft on the Kasberg in Upper Austria can be admired in the Cumberland Wildlife Park Grünau im Almtal in the future. “Willi” comes from the very early Middle Ages, as an analysis using the C14 radiocarbon method has shown.
The cavers Franz Moser and Franz Rührlinger discovered the well-preserved skeleton on December 29, 2020 in a 30-meter-deep shaft on the Kasberg. Even then it was almost complete. Individual hand and foot root bones were then found when the shaft was inspected again last year. A total of about 96 percent of the skeleton is present, only one kneecap is missing.
The individual parts were prepared at the Department of Paleontology at the University of Vienna. The biologist Teresa Schaer and the paleontologist Gernot Rabeder have cleaned the bones and made them durable against the effects of the weather. To do this, the skeleton was embedded with water-soluble glue. The age was then determined at the Reiss-Engelhorn-Museum in Mannheim. To ensure that the bones came from the same individual, two pieces were examined. The researchers dated the skeleton to a range between 567 and 642 AD.
In the future, “Willi” will be on display in the wildlife park in Grünau, to which the finders have made the bones available on permanent loan. These are draped as individual parts and not assembled into a skeleton.
The wisent, also known as the European bison, lived in the wild in our latitudes until the early Middle Ages. Today there are only isolated small populations in Europe, for example in the Bialowieza National Park on the Polish-Belarusian border, in the German Rothaargebirge or in Romania.
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