After more than six decades, Bo the Bison, which has been prominently displayed at the Badlands Historical Centre, might be headed home.
Bo’s official name is Bison antiquus occidentalis. His partial skeleton was discovered in an abandoned strip mine near Taber, Alberta, in May of 1957. After it was excavated it came to Drumheller.
“We have decided as a board that the bison skeleton was actually found in the 1950s in Taber, and Taber has been asking for a couple of years, that if we are going in a different direction, could they have it,” said Louise Henrickson of the Badlands Historical Centre. “When they found it in the 1950s. we are the only dinosaur museum in Alberta, which is why it came here.”
The museum has begun working with the Town of Taber to have the artifact returned to its home in their community.
According to a paper prepared by Frank Hadfield of Dinosaur Valley Studios, the find could be the earliest know evidence for man in Alberta.
According to the account by Hadfield, it was excavated by L.A. Blaycock and J.f. Jones, who were geologists from the Alberta Research Council. It was found in alluvium (sand and clay of river origin) deposited in an oxbow lake of the ancestral Oldman River.
Bo is a mature male, and wood fragments in the same sands show it to be 10,000 to 11,000 years old. Alberta contemporaries at that time include the wooly mammoth, dire wolves and prehistoric equine.
It is most likely the ancestor of the Plains Buffalo. According to his research, it evolved in North America probably from an isolated population of Bison antiquus that had its range restricted by the end of the ice age. As there was general continental warming and drying, the Bison antiquus became extinct, leaving the Bison antiquus occidentalis. As the climate became cooler, Bison antiquus occidentalis became extinct.
What the find also cements, according to Hadfield, was evidence of early man. A stone artifact was found embedded in the braincase of the specimen. The stone shows evidence of use by battering, and since it was found where it could not have been deposited by a natural process, led him to conclude it is an artifact and indicates the animal could have been killed by man.
“We were thinking that we should give it back to them in all fairness, and if we want to diversify the museum, freeing up the floor space would be nice,” said Henrickson.

Disciplinary hearings for two healthcare workers in relation to the December 2020 death of an Indigenous woman at the Hanna Health Centre have been postponed until March 2023, and the widower is asking the College of Registered Nurses of Alberta (CRNA) for answers.
The hearings, which were originally scheduled to begin on Monday, September 12 in relation to the death of Lillian Vanasse, who was of Ojibway Indigenous descent, were postponed until March 2023 only two weeks before the set hearing dates; Ms. Vanasse’s widower Cory Ashley has yet to be told the reason for this postponement.
“I have requested, four times now, why have both (hearings) been postponed, and I still have not received a valid reason,” says Cory Ashley, Ms. Vanasse’s widower. “They (CRNA) keep replying that it is a privacy issue, and because it is a privacy issue they are not obligated to tell me.”
It is alleged Ms. Vanasse did not receive adequate care while at the Hanna Health Care Centre, where she was transported by ambulance on the evening of Christmas 2020, due to systemic racism.
This lack of care is alleged to have ultimately led to Ms. Vanasse’s death while in hospital in the early morning hours of December 26, 2020.
Mr. Ashley filed a complaint with the CRNA against the two healthcare workers in the days following his wife’s death and now, nearly two years later, is still waiting for answers.
A representative from CRNA told the Mail, “We do not publicly share information about registrants under, or being considered for investigation. It is not uncommon that in complex cases that the parties involved agree to a future hearing date (adjournment).”
The hearings for the two healthcare workers are scheduled for March 6 to March 10, 2023 and March 20 to March 24, 2023.