European bison's decline over the past 21,000 years

Cary Institute's July Pilowsky and colleagues have reconstructed the European bison's decline over the past 21,000 years. The map shows bison abundance and range over time, based on thousands of simulations. Abundance is shown as the number of bison per 76 km x 87 km grid cell. Grey indicates areas where there is less than 25% model agreement on bison occupancy — in other words, high uncertainty. Red points show radiocarbon-dated fossils of European bison, which were used to verify the model’s accuracy.

Understanding how the species nearly went extinct can help to inform ongoing bison conservation efforts.

Credit: Pilowsky et al./Proc. B 2023