Blue Babe: The Scientists Who Made Stew From a 36,000-Year-Old Bison

*not the actual stew, but you can check it out here

In 1984, paleontologist Dale Guthrie hosted a dinner party at his home in Fairbanks, Alaska. The menu featured bison stew with garlic, onions, carrots, potatoes, and wine. Nothing unusual about that in Alaska, where hunting traditions run deep and game meat dinners are common.

Except the meat was 36,000 years old.

Guthrie and about eight of his colleagues sat down to eat a stew made from the neck of an Ice Age steppe bison that had been frozen in permafrost since before humans built the pyramids, before they invented agriculture, before they even figured out how to make pottery. This bison had been killed by an ancient lion, partially scavenged by wolves and ravens, then frozen solid during the last Ice Age, where it stayed until gold miners accidentally unearthed it in 1979.

And according to everyone who tried it, the 36,000-year-old meat was tough, a bit earthy, but surprisingly edible. Nobody got sick. The stew tasted like beef with a faint hint of mushroom and soil.

This is the story of Blue Babe, one of the best-preserved Ice Age mammals ever discovered, and the scientists who decided that studying ancient fauna was interesting, but tasting it would be unforgettable.

The Discovery: Gold Miners Find More Than They Bargained For

In July 1979, gold miners Walter and Ruth Roman and their sons were working near Fairbanks, Alaska, using a hydraulic mining hose to melt frozen muck in search of gold deposits. As water from the hose melted layers of ice and soil that had been frozen for millennia, something unexpected emerged: a large, bluish animal carcass embedded in the permafrost.

The Romans realized immediately that this wasn't just any dead animal. The preservation was extraordinary. They could see hide, muscle tissue, even what looked like blood. This was something significant, something that needed experts.

They contacted the University of Alaska Fairbanks, and paleontologist R. Dale Guthrie was sent to investigate. When Guthrie arrived at the site, he knew exactly what he was looking at: a steppe bison (Bison priscus), an extinct species that roamed the mammoth steppe during the Ice Age alongside woolly mammoths, woolly rhinoceroses, and giant cave lions.

And it was almost completely intact.

The Excavation: Racing Against Decomposition

Guthrie faced an immediate problem. Now that the bison was partially exposed and thawing, decomposition could begin within days. But the surrounding ground was still frozen solid, locked in permafrost with large ice wedges nearby. A careful, methodical excavation would take weeks or months, time they didn't have.

Guthrie made a difficult call: cut the thawed portion of the bison free from the still-frozen head and neck, transport it back to the university, and refreeze it. Then continue excavating the head and neck as summer heat gradually melted the surrounding ice.

It was summer, so temperatures melted several inches of soil per day. Eventually, the carcass hung suspended from the frozen bank by just its head and neck, which remained embedded in ice. As those final pieces thawed, Guthrie's team carefully excavated them, reunited them with the body, and stored the complete specimen.

The entire excavation site was meticulously documented. Every bit of frozen soil surrounding the bison was collected and screen-washed to find bone fragments, hair, insects, wood, plant parts, anything that could provide clues about the environment and circumstances of the bison's death.

Blue Babe Gets His Name

When the bison was first uncovered, it was covered in a brilliant blue chalky substance. This wasn't paint or dye. It was vivianite, a blue iron phosphate mineral that forms when phosphorus from decomposing organic tissue reacts with iron in the surrounding soil.

Initially, the vivianite coating was white, but when exposed to air, it oxidized and turned a striking blue color. This gave the bison its nickname: Blue Babe, after Paul Bunyan's mythical giant blue ox, Babe.

The name stuck. Today, Blue Babe is how everyone refers to this specimen, from museum curators to scientists to visitors who come to see the mounted taxidermy at the University of Alaska Museum of the North.

What Radiocarbon Dating Revealed

Analysis of Blue Babe's skin revealed that he died approximately 36,000 years ago, during the late Pleistocene epoch, though recent research suggests the bison may actually be at least 50,000 years old (radiocarbon dating becomes less accurate beyond 50,000 years).

This was a time when Alaska looked completely different. There were no forests. Instead, a vast grassland called the mammoth steppe stretched from Spain all the way across Siberia to Canada, supporting populations of enormous grazing mammals. Alongside steppe bison, you'd have seen woolly mammoths, woolly rhinos, giant ground sloths, cave bears, saber-toothed cats, and massive lions.

Humans were around, but sparse. Neanderthals still existed in Europe. Modern humans were beginning to spread across the continents. And both human species hunted steppe bison, as evidenced by cave paintings in places like Lascaux and Altamira that depict these magnificent long-horned animals.

The Cause of Death: Killed by a Lion

Examination of Blue Babe's remains revealed the circumstances of his death with remarkable clarity.

Claw marks on the rear of the carcass and puncture wounds from large canine teeth in the skin showed that Blue Babe was killed by a cave lion (Panthera leoatrox), an extinct species that was an ancestor of modern African lions. These Ice Age lions were massive, about 25% larger than today's lions, and they were apex predators of the mammoth steppe.

The lion attacked from behind, probably ambushing the bison. The teeth punctures and claws tore into Blue Babe's flesh, bringing him down. Once dead, the lion peeled back the skin, exposing the vertebrae, ribs, and upper limbs, and began feeding on the muscle tissue.

But the lion didn't finish its meal. Perhaps it was disturbed, or perhaps it cached the kill intending to return later. Either way, other scavengers moved in. Tooth marks and scattered bones suggested that wolves, foxes, wolverines, and ravens all fed on the carcass after the lion left.

Researchers even found coagulated blood still present in the skin at the base of the puncture wounds. The blood had frozen in place 36,000 years ago and remained there, locked in time, until scientists thawed it in 1979.

The Preservation: Why Blue Babe Survived

Blue Babe's extraordinary preservation came down to timing and temperature.

The bison died during fall or winter, when temperatures were already cold. The carcass cooled rapidly and froze solid before significant decomposition could occur. This quick freeze is critical. If decomposition begins before freezing, bacteria and enzymes break down the tissue, and you end up with just bones.

Once frozen, the bison was covered by additional soil and organic material, eventually becoming part of the permafrost layer. A layer of vegetation grew on top, insulating the remains and preventing seasonal thawing. For 36,000 years, Blue Babe remained frozen at consistent sub-zero temperatures.

The preservation was so exceptional that when scientists examined the carcass, they found:

• Muscle tissue with a texture like beef jerky

• White, greasy bone marrow intact inside the long bones

• A layer of fat still present under the skin

• Coagulated blood drops at wound sites

• Even some remaining skin and hair (though most hair had fallen off from slight decomposition before freezing)

This level of preservation is incredibly rare. Most fossils from this period are just bones. Finding soft tissue, muscle, fat, and blood is extraordinary.

The Infamous Dinner Party: April 6, 1984

By 1984, taxidermist Eirik Granqvist had completed his work preparing Blue Babe for permanent museum display. The specimen was ready to be unveiled. And Björn Kurtén, a famous Finnish paleontologist who specialized in prehistoric mammals, was visiting Fairbanks to give a guest lecture.

Guthrie decided this called for a celebration. And being a hunter himself, familiar with processing and eating game meat, he had an idea.

"All of us working on this thing had heard the tales of the Russians [who] excavated things like bison and mammoth in the Far North [that] were frozen enough to eat," Guthrie later explained. "So we decided, 'You know what we can do? Make a meal using this bison.'"

Guthrie cut a small piece from the bison's neck, selecting a section where the meat had frozen fresh before scavengers reached it. The piece was only a few pounds, enough to make stew for about eight people. "Making neck steak didn't sound like a very good idea," Guthrie recalls. "But you know, what we could do is put a lot of vegetables and spices, and it wouldn't be too bad."

When the frozen meat thawed, Guthrie wrote, "it gave off an unmistakable beef aroma, not unpleasantly mixed with a faint smell of the earth in which it was found, with a touch of mushroom."

They prepared the meat with generous amounts of garlic and onions, along with carrots, potatoes, and wine. The stew simmered. Wine flowed. And on April 6, 1984, roughly eight guests sat down to eat 36,000-year-old bison.

How Did It Taste?

According to everyone present, the stew was... fine.

"It tasted a little bit like what I would have expected, with a little bit of wringing of mud," Guthrie said. "But it wasn't that bad."

The meat was tough and somewhat hard to chew, which makes sense given that it had essentially been freeze-dried for millennia. The texture wasn't quite like fresh beef, more like very well-aged jerky. But the flavor was recognizable as red meat, beef-like, with that earthy, mushroomy undertone from being buried in soil.

Most importantly, nobody got sick. No food poisoning, no digestive issues, no prehistoric pathogens causing problems. The 36,000-year-old meat was safe to eat.

Guthrie, who regularly hunted and ate game, wasn't particularly worried about safety. "That would take a very special kind of microorganism [to make me sick]," he reasoned. "And I eat frozen meat all the time, of animals that I kill or my neighbors kill. And they do get kind of old after three years in the freezer."

His logic was sound. The rapid freezing and consistent sub-zero temperatures prevented bacterial growth. Any microorganisms present when the bison died were long dead. Freezing doesn't kill all bacteria, but 36,000 years in permafrost certainly does.

The Tradition of Scientists Eating Their Specimens

Blue Babe isn't the only prehistoric animal scientists have tasted. There's a long, strange tradition of researchers eating ancient specimens, particularly those found in Siberian and Alaskan permafrost.

Russian scientists in the 1900s reportedly ate mammoth meat found frozen in Siberia. These stories are well-documented in scientific literature, though details are sometimes sparse or contradictory. The meat was often described as tough and unappetizing but technically edible.

In 1951, members of The Explorers Club in New York famously served what they claimed was 250,000-year-old frozen mammoth meat at their annual dinner. However, DNA analysis decades later revealed the meat was actually green sea turtle, not mammoth. Whether this was intentional deception or an honest mistake remains unclear.

More recently, in 2019, researchers studying a 42,000-year-old foal discovered in Siberian permafrost found liquid blood still present in the carcass. While nobody reported eating the foal, the discovery sparked conversations about whether ancient blood could be safely consumed.

Why do scientists keep doing this? Part of it is scientific curiosity, what does preserved prehistoric meat actually taste like? Part is the sheer novelty and bragging rights. And part is probably just because they can.

Blue Babe remains the most famous example, partly because the specimen itself is so well-known and partly because the dinner was relatively well-documented and the participants were happy to discuss it.

Blue Babe Today

Today, Blue Babe is on permanent display at the University of Alaska Museum of the North in Fairbanks, where you can visit him in the Gallery of Alaska.

Well, technically, it's a reconstruction. The actual bones, skin, and remaining tissue couldn't be displayed directly without continued deterioration. Instead, taxidermist Eirik Granqvist created a plaster model based on Blue Babe's exact dimensions and skeleton, then covered it with the bison's actual tanned and treated skin.

The result is a remarkably lifelike mount showing Blue Babe as he appeared in life, a powerful male steppe bison with long, curved horns and a massive shoulder hump. The mount clearly shows the wounds inflicted by the lion attack, the torn skin, and exposed bones where scavengers fed.

Blue Babe has become one of the museum's most popular exhibits. School groups visit. Tourists photograph him. And occasionally, someone asks the inevitable question: "Is it true they ate part of it?"

Yes. Yes, they did.

The Legacy: What Blue Babe Taught Us

Beyond the sensational story of the ancient stew, Blue Babe has provided invaluable scientific data.

The pollen, plant fragments, and insects found in the frozen soil around the carcass revealed details about the late Pleistocene environment. The mammoth steppe was a mosaic of grasses, sedges, and flowering plants, cold but productive, supporting massive herbivore populations.

Analysis of Blue Babe's gut contents (yes, those were preserved too) showed what he'd been eating before he died, helping scientists reconstruct steppe bison diet and behavior. The wound patterns confirmed that cave lions hunted like modern lions, using ambush tactics and targeting large prey. The scavenger marks documented the Ice Age food web, showing how energy moved through the ecosystem.

Blue Babe also demonstrated how perfectly permafrost can preserve organic remains. This has implications for understanding ancient DNA, paleoclimate research, and even discussions about de-extinction projects. If tissue can survive 36,000 years in such good condition, what else might we find?

The Bottom Line

In 1984, a group of scientists sat down to eat stew made from a bison that had been frozen for 36,000 years. The meat was tough and tasted like earth and mushrooms, but it was recognizable as red meat and nobody got sick.

Was it scientifically necessary to eat Blue Babe? Absolutely not. Did it provide valuable data? Not really. Was it a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that these researchers couldn't resist? Definitely.

The story of Blue Babe's dinner party has become legendary in paleontology circles. It's cited in papers, discussed in museums, and featured in articles about strange scientific traditions. It's part of Blue Babe's story now, as much as the discovery, the excavation, or the scientific analysis.

Guthrie has no regrets. He got to taste history, literally, and lived to tell about it. Blue Babe continues to educate visitors at the University of Alaska Museum of the North. And somewhere in the scientific literature, there's a footnote about how ancient bison, properly prepared with lots of garlic and vegetables, tastes surprisingly okay.

The next time you see a steppe bison skeleton in a museum, remember that at least one of them ended up as dinner at a paleontologist's house. And that might be the most Alaskan thing ever.

Sources

Atlas Obscura. (2025). The Dinner Party That Served Up 50,000-Year-Old Bison Stew. Retrieved from https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/ancient-bison-stew-blue-babe-alaska

University of Alaska Fairbanks. Blue Babe, A Messenger from the Ice Age. Retrieved from https://www.alaska.edu/uajourney/history-and-trivia/blue-babe-a-messenger-fro/

Ancient Origins. (2017). Blue Babe: Would You Eat 36000-year-old Bison Meat? Retrieved from https://www.ancient-origins.net/artifacts-other-artifacts/blue-babe-009862

The Vintage News. (2018). 36000-year-old Meat of a Mummified Bison was used for a Stew. Retrieved from https://www.thevintagenews.com/2018/08/04/blue-babe/

NPR. (2022). 'Blue Babe,' a 55,000-year-old bison, was so well-preserved he could be eaten. Retrieved from https://www.npr.org/2022/08/26/1119353933/bison-blue-babe-preserved-eaten

Prateek DG. (2023). How does a 50,000-year-aged Bison taste? Retrieved from https://prateekdg.substack.com/p/how-does-a-50000-year-aged-bison

Wikipedia. Steppe bison. Retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steppe_bison