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A Yukon couple digging up their basement to install a power line made a find that has excited paleontologists. What the couple initially believed was a dinosaur bone turned out to be the intact skeleton of a bison that had lain there undisturbed for 10,000 years, reports the Globe and Mail. It is the most complete bison skeleton ever found in the Canadian territory and researchers hope it will help explain why the animals all but vanished from the Yukon after the last ice age.
Researchers believe the animal perished after plunging through ice on a lake. "The great thing about serendipitous finds like this is that they change the way we understand our history,” a government paleontologist says. "The lesson here is anyone out there digging basements should keep their eyes peeled for bones,” he says. “No one would have ever guessed that there would be bison bones there, and there were. So who knows where else they could be?"
