Something good has come out of the drought situation locally. Tony Blisset of Springfield waded out into the Sangamon River at Riverside Park while on a family outing and discovered a vertebra from an extinct Harlan’s muskox.
Blisset and his family brought the bone to the Illinois State Museum’s Research and Collections Center for identification. Museum paleontologists recognized it as a neck vertebra from the large head-butting mammal.
Blisset donated the fossil to the museum where it’s on public display.
