American bison

American bison Temporal range: 0.01–0 Ma PreꞒ Ꞓ O S D C P T J K Pg N ↓ Early Holocene – present
Plains bison (Bison bison bison)
Wood bison (Bison bison athabascae)
Conservation status
Near Threatened  (IUCN 3.1)[1]
Scientific classification
Domain:	Eukaryota
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Chordata
Class:	Mammalia
Order:	Artiodactyla
Family:	Bovidae
Subfamily:	Bovinae
Subtribe:	Bovina
Genus:	Bison
Species:	B. bison
Binomial name
Bison bison (Linnaeus, 1758)
Subspecies
B. b. athabascae (wood bison) B. b. bison (plains bison)
IUCN range of the two American bison subspecies.   Plains bison (Bison bison subsp. bison)   Wood bison (Bison bison subsp. athabascae)
Synonyms
Bos americanus Gmelin, 1788 Bos bison Linnaeus, 1758 Bison americanus (Gmelin, 1788) Bison bison montanae Krumbiegel, 1980

The American bison (Bison bison; pl.: bison), commonly known as the American buffalo, or simply buffalo (not to be confused with true buffalo), is a species of bison that is endemic (or native) to North America. It is one of two extant species of bison, along with the European bison. Its historical range circa 9000 BC is referred to as the great bison belt, a tract of rich grassland spanning from Alaska south to the Gulf of Mexico, and east to the Atlantic Seaboard (nearly to the Atlantic tidewater in some areas), as far north as New York, south to Georgia, and according to some sources, further south to northern Florida, with sightings in North Carolina near Buffalo Ford on the Catawba River as late as 1750.^[2][3][4]

Two subspecies or ecotypes have been described: the plains bison (B. b. bison), smaller and with a more rounded hump; and the wood bison (B. b. athabascae), the larger of the two and having a taller, square hump.^{[5][6][7][8][9][10]} Furthermore, the plains bison has been suggested to consist of a northern plains (B. b. montanae) and a southern plains (B. b. bison) subspecies, bringing the total to three.^[8] However, this is generally not supported. The wood bison is one of the largest wild species of extant bovid in the world, surpassed only by the Asian gaur.^[11] Among extant land animals in North America, the bison is the heaviest and the longest, and the second tallest after the moose.

Once roaming in vast herds, the species nearly became extinct by a combination of commercial hunting and slaughter in the 19th century and introduction of bovine diseases from domestic cattle. With an estimated population of 60 million in the late 18th century, the species was culled down to just 541 animals by 1889 as part of the subjugation of the Native Americans, because the American bison was a major resource for their traditional way of life (food source, hides for clothing and shelter, and horns and bones for tools).^[12][13] Recovery efforts expanded in the mid-20th century, with a resurgence to roughly 31,000 wild bison as of March 2019.^[14] For many years, the population was primarily found in a few national parks and reserves. Through multiple reintroductions, the species now freely roams wild in several regions in the United States, Canada and Mexico. The American bison has also been introduced to Yakutia in Russia.^[15]

Spanning back millennia, Native American tribes have had cultural and spiritual connections to the American bison. It is the national mammal of the United States.