Archaeologists discover mysterious bone arrangements at ancient bison kill site

A bison kill from Alberta that dates back 2,500 years has yielded an impressive number of finds. The artifacts will help experts better understand the local culture of the ancient Northern Plains, about which much is still unknown.

Archaeologists found the remains of 65 bison at the site, along with more than a hundred stone points. The stones are a mystery of their own — they're made from rocks that are only found in North Dakota, more than 600 miles away.

But the most interesting part of the find is that beneath the stone tools and original bison remains, there's another layer of bison bones arranged in odd patterns. Western Digs reports that the bones were found "standing on end, perched in precise, almost sculptural patterns."

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In total, the site has yielded more than 200,000 bison bone fragments, and radiocarbon tests date the animals to about 500 B.C.E. Dr. Shawn Bubel, an archaeologist at the University of Lethbridge, told Western Digs that the finds are providing new information about a culture and site that may otherwise have been lost to history.