ONE NIGHT IN 1984, A handful of fortunate visitors gathered on the Alaska residence of paleontologist Dale Guthrie to eat stew crafted from a once-in-a-lifetime delicacy: the neck meat of an historic, recently-discovered bison nicknamed Blue Babe.
The feast match Alaska custom: Since state legislation bans the shopping for, bartering, and promoting of sport meats, you’ll be able to’t discover native favorites comparable to caribou stew at eating places. These dishes are loved when hunters host a gathering. However their meat supply is often the moose inhabitants—not a preserved piece of organic historical past.

Blue Babe had been found simply 5 years earlier by gold miners, who seen {that a} hydraulic mining hose melted a part of the gunk that had saved the bison frozen. They reported their findings to the close by College of Alaska Fairbanks. Involved that it will decompose, Guthrie—then a professor and researcher on the college—opted to dig out Blue Babe instantly. However the icy, impenetrable environment made that difficult. So he lower off what he may, refroze it, and waited for the top and neck to thaw.

Archaeology curator Josh Reuther and College of Arizona’s François B. Lanoë draw a pattern from Blue Babe for the continuing redating venture. UA MUSEUM OF THE NORTH
Quickly, Guthrie and his group had Blue Babe on campus and began studying extra in regards to the historic animal. They knew that it had perished about 36,000 years in the past, due to radiocarbon relationship. (Although new analysis exhibits that Blue Babe is no less than 50,000 years outdated, in line with the college’s Curator of Archaeology, Josh Reuther.) Tooth marks and claw marks additionally advised that the bison was killed by an ancestor of the lion, the Panthera leoatrox.

Blue Babe froze quickly following its dying—maybe the results of a wintertime demise. Researchers had been amazed to search out that Blue Babe had frozen so properly that its muscle tissue retained a texture not not like beef jerky. Its fatty pores and skin and bone marrow remained intact, too, even after 1000’s of years. So why not attempt consuming a part of it?

It had been completed earlier than. “All of us engaged on this factor had heard the tales of the Russians [who] excavated issues like bison and mammoth within the Far North [that] had been frozen sufficient to eat,” Guthrie says of a number of notorious meals. “So we determined, ‘You understand what we will do? Make a meal utilizing this bison.’”

Guthrie determined to host the particular dinner when taxidermist Eirik Granqvist accomplished his work on Blue Babe and the late Björn Kurtén was on the town to provide a visitor lecture. “Making neck steak didn’t sound like an excellent concept,” Guthrie remembers. “However you already know, what we may do is put a whole lot of greens and spices, and it wouldn’t be too dangerous.”

Eirik Granqvist engaged on the taxidermy of Blue Babe. UA MUSEUM OF THE NORTH

To make the stew for roughly eight folks, Guthrie lower off a small a part of the bison’s neck, the place the meat had frozen whereas recent. “When it thawed, it gave off an unmistakable beef aroma, not unpleasantly combined with a faint odor of the earth by which it was discovered, with a contact of mushroom,” he as soon as wrote. They then added a beneficiant quantity of garlic and onions, together with carrots and potatoes, to the aged meat. Couple that with wine, and it grew to become a full-fledged dinner.

Guthrie, who’s a hunter, says he wasn’t deterred by the 1000’s of years the bison had aged, nor the prospect of getting sick. “That may take a really particular sort of microorganism [to make me sick],” he says. “And I eat frozen meat on a regular basis, of animals that I kill or my neighbors kill. They usually do get sort of outdated after three years within the freezer.”

Blue Babe on show at College of Alaska Museum of the North. PATRICIA FISHER PH๏τOGRAPHY

Fortunately, everybody current lived to inform the story (and the bison stays on show on the College of Alaska Museum of the North). The Blue Babe stew wasn’t unpalatable, both, in line with Guthrie. “It tasted just a little bit like what I might have anticipated, with just a little little bit of wring of mud,” he says. “Nevertheless it wasn’t that dangerous. Not so dangerous that we couldn’t every have a bowl.” He can’t bear in mind if anybody current had seconds, although.