Pavel Kosintsev    from the Institute of Animals and Plants Ecology reported about the genetic analysis of the fossils found in the Ural caves.

      As a result, it turned out that the fragments belong to an earlier unknown species of prehistoric bison - a crossbreed of bison and urus.

      It was previously believed that mammoths in the Late Pleistocene neighboured on a single species of bison only - a primitive one, similar to the modern American bison.

      However the DNA analysis of the fossils found in the Ural caves has proven that there was another species, the so-called bison X. It has turned to be a bison-and-urus cross breed. The hybridization time is about 120 thousand years ago, when this particular species appeared.