Thanks to the observant 11-year-old Marcel Wroński and the low water level in the Vistula River, a unique Pleistocene relic was saved. The Museum of the Earth in Warsaw received a 50,000-year-old skull fragment he lifted from the Vistula River.
Wroński, a fifth-grade pupil from the village of Zaborów, noticed the bone while walking along the riverbank during unusually low water. What looked like “a seemingly unremarkable piece of bone” proved “a priceless find,” reported Fakt.
Museum specialists at first suspected the fragment belonged to an extinct aurochs but, after detailed measurements, identified it as part of the braincase of the steppe bison, Bison Priscus, the extinct ancestor of today’s European bison.
The museum praised the boy for contacting experts. “Once again, we would like to thank and congratulate Marcel on this exceptional discovery. We wish him further fascinating finds and success in his studies,” wrote the institution on social media.
The steppe bison lived in large herds across Europe during the Pleistocene and disappeared near the epoch’s end, though a few isolated populations survived into the early Holocene. Genetic studies indicate that around 120,000 years ago the animal interbred with the aurochs, giving rise to the lineage that became the modern European bison.
Conservators have begun stabilising the bone before it joins the museum’s exhibits on Central European megafauna. The region has yielded similar discoveries; during construction of Warsaw’s second metro line, workers uncovered another prehistoric bison skull, reported TVN24.
Museum staff urged anyone who stumbles upon ancient remains to alert professionals so that scientific context and proper preservation can turn chance finds into data about local prehistory. Wroński left the museum without the fragment but “proud to have contributed to science,”.
Produced with the assistance of a news-analysis system.