abstract
- American bison (Bison bison) were nearly hunted to extinction by the 20th century. This rapid decline and the fragmented nature of remnant populations pose challenges to their recovery and resilience, as does human-facilitated admixture between bison subspecies and cattle (Bos taurus). To contextualize current diversity, we sequenced 115 ancient and 45 modern bison genomes from the past ~20,000 years. Our results show that past bison populations were connected, in contrast to structured modern herds. Modern wood bison (B. b. athabascae), a northerly distributed subspecies, carry plains bison (B. b. bison) ancestry from 1920s translocations, and many sampled bison lack cattle ancestry. Our findings reveal the legacy of human impacts on bison and highlight the applicability of ancient DNA for guiding wildlife restoration.