Added on May 11, 2026 Sara Swanson

Prehistoric musk ox skull found in Manchester 100+ years ago

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Prehistoric musk ox skull found in William Schlicht’s farm field in 1915 in Manchester. On display in the University of Michigan’s Natural History Museum, April 2026. Photo by Sara Swanson.

by Sara Swanson

In the summer of 1915, workmen digging a drain on a farm field that is today located in the Manchester City limits (just northeast of today’s high school) discovered a fossilized skull of a prehistoric musk ox about four feet down. The skull, only the second to be discovered in Michigan, went on to be a key talking point in a more-than-century-long fight over the categorization of prehistoric musk ox species, and is on display today in the University of Michigan’s Museum of Natural History in Ann Arbor.

The field was owned by William John Schlicht (1865–1948), who lived with his wife, Katherine, and their children just across the township line in Sharon. (Note: This is William J. Schlicht, not to be confused with his first cousin, Bridgewater Township’s William H. Schlicht, for whom the 3-story Schlicht-Parker barn on Lima Center Road had been constructed.) An article about its discovery was published in the Manchester Enterprise sometime around the beginning of August, which brought it to the attention of Dr. Ermine Cowles Case (1871–1955).

Dr. Ermine Cowles Case, the paleontologist who took possession of the muskox skull and published the first paper about it. Photo credit: University of Michigan

Case was a prominent American paleontologist, internationally known as one of the world’s leading authorities on prehistoric life. He taught at the University of Michigan from 1907-1941, and was a professor of geology and paleontology. He was also the Director of the Museum of Geology, and when it changed in 1928 to the Museum of Paleontology, Case became that institution’s first Director.

We don’t know how the conversation went when Case approached the Schlicht family, but the skull made its way to the University of Michigan’s burgeoning fossil collection and shortly afterwards Case published a short paper about it. A search was conducted, but other than fragments from the nose bone inadvertently broken off by a spade during its discovery, no other bones were located.

The skull found in Manchester had an interesting peculiarity, a large cavity in the left cheek. Case speculated that the animal had suffered a severe injury in some combat from which it had, in part at least, recovered, as the edges of the wound were rounded and partly replaced by new bone.

Case’s paper asserts incorrectly that the skull was discovered 3 miles north east of Manchester, which would put the discovery in Sharon or Freedom Township, depending on how far east you interpret the “east” to be. Schlicht corrects this mistake after the fact but it has been picked up and repeated in about half of the subsequent papers, articles, and books that include the find, and is even incorrect on a new, still-in-beta, interactive online map of fossil discoveries made by mindat.org.

The first correction comes in print 8 years later. Schlicht was contacted by Oliver P. Hay, the author of a book about vertebrate animals from the Pleistocene discovered in the eastern half of the US and Canadian published in 1923. Hay notes in the text that Schlicht sent him a written description and plat showing the location of the discovery.

So where was the discovery? Hay reports it as 0.5 mile northwest of the town, near the center of the northwest quarter of the northwest quarter of section 1, township 4 south, range 3 east. At the time this was north of the village limits but exists within the city limits today. The location is still an agricultural field, private property, but is located kitty-corner to the mowed practice field area to the east of Manchester High School. The northeast corner of the practice fields abuts the southwest corner of the agricultural field the skull was discovered in.

In Case’s paper, he easily identifies the musk ox as belonging to a large bull from the extinct prehistoric species Symbos cavifrons. At that point the only other prehistoric musk ox fossils discovered in Michigan were found seven years earlier in Moorland Township in Muskegon County and were identified as belonging to the smaller Boötherium sargenti. Case notes that there was debate at the time whether Symbos and Boötherium were actually one species. He doesn’t make a strong argument for the two species position, but suggests it makes sense at least provisionally to consider them two separate species.

Interestingly he states that the argument for one species was that the smaller Boötherium was actually the juvenile form and Symbos the mature form. While this may have been AN argument, it appears the prevailing argument at the time for one species was that of sexual dimorphism, differences in size and structure of the males and females of one species. And this as it turned out was the case. After multiple papers arguing the contrary over the decades, in 1989, the Smithsonian Institute published a paper placing Symbos and Boötherium together in the same species called Boötherium as it was the older of the two names. In it, Case’s 1915 paper on the Manchester skull was cited (and the correct location of the discovery was given.)

Although the 1989 paper is the beginning of the end for the two separate species theory which had been the prevailing theory in the scientific community since the 1850’s, the nail in coffin came in 2018 with a paper titled “Molecular resolution to a morphological controversy: The case of North American fossil musk oxen Bootherium and Symbos” which documents the use of DNA to finally demonstrate that indeed individuals previously categorized as Bootherium and Symbos are in fact members of the same species. Whether or not the Manchester skull, cited in many of the previous papers participating in the debate was used is unknown (because the paper is behind a paywall only institutions can access) but it is unlikely as the abstract states that the samples came from specimens that were not fully fossilized.

At different times the prehistoric muskox has been called Harlan’s muskox, wood ox, woodland muskox, helmeted muskox, or the bonnet-headed muskox. It diverged from its closest living relative, the muskox you are probably thinking of, around 3 million years ago. It was significantly taller and leaner with thicker skulls and longer snouts than muskoxen found today.

The prehistoric musk ox wasn’t the only large mammal living in Michigan during its lifetime. During the Pleistocene, mastodons, mammoths, giant beavers, flat-headed peccaries, stage moose, elk, caribou, white-tailed deer lived here. But it went into decline, and eventual extinction, approximately 11,000 years ago, along with many of the other species of megafauna at the end of the last Ice Age.

Photo of the skull published in the Michigan Daily, Nov. 7, 1915.

The University of Michigan Daily, the student newspaper still published today, ran an article about the skull on November 7, after the skull had been collected and brought to Ann Arbor. The article, by Walter A. Atlas, reports that Mr. W. H. Buettner, of the geology department, prepared the specimen and photographs were made of it and that “as soon as an appropriate place can be found for it in the museum it will be taken from it’s box and placed on exhibition”.

If you are having trouble imaging the picture these dry facts are painting, Atlas also narrates the life of the musk ox whose skull was discovered on Schlicht’s farm:

“About 20,000 years ago when the last traces of the terrible glaciers that had covered the country as far south as the Ohio river were disappearing from what is now the state of Michigan, a huge musk-ox led his herd about the country near the present site of Manchester, Mich.

“He was a powerful old bull, about four feet high, and slightly more than six feet long. He weighed about 13,000 pounds and his thick brown hair was long and shaggy. His horns, which measured twenty-four inches from tip to tip, and which were thirteen and a half inches in circumference where they parted from the forehead, were of a peculiar shape.

“Upon emerging from the forehead they first curved slightly backward, lying close to the head, then swept straight downward, turning forward and outward, and finally tapering upward to the pointed tips.

“When the gigantic glacier retreated it dropped in it’s wake mosses and various kinds of herbage. They were evergreen trees and shrubs in abundance and with a great deal of labor the oxen were able to get a plentiful supply of food.

“One day when the supply of food was becoming scarce some sharp-horn-ed animal attempted to poach on the grazing territory that the musk-ox considered his own, and a terrible battle ensued. The musk-ox, although heavy and short legged was quick and strong, and emerged from the struggle victorious. In the melee, how-ever, his antagonist stabbed him through the left check and inflicted a deep wound. A short time afterwards, while foraging for supplies, the musk-ox fell into one of the morasses which abounded in the region, and being unable to extricate himself because of his great weight, perished.”

Today the skull found in Manchester carries the catalog number 3450, is one of six cataloged musk ox specimens from Michigan at the University of Michigan Museum of Paleontology, and is the only one on display in the University’s Museum of Natural History. You can see it yourself in person in the Michigan gallery on the first floor of the museum which is located at 1105 N University Ave in Ann Arbor. They are open daily from 10am to 5pm this summer (please check to confirm before you go) and admission is free.

One fun detail and an indication of how recent the conclusion to the “one species or two” debate was reached is that the card on display identifying the skull still reads Symbos cavifrons.

William Schlicht had many descendants, including his great-grand daughter, local historian Laura Sutton, who lives less than a mile from where the skull was discovered. She reports that the discovery of the prehistoric ox skull is not a story her grandfather passed down. However, her grandfather, William’s son Clarence would have been 13 the summer the skull was discovered and Sutton reports that the summer of 1915 he was bed-ridden with polio so it is understandable how this family story may have been lost over time.

While the musk ox skull is the only recorded large prehistoric animal fossil discovered in the City of Manchester, we are surrounded by many sites of fossil discoveries! Mastodon bones have been found all along Pleasant Lake Road in Sharon, Freedom, and Lodi Townships. In 1979, a half complete mastodon skeleton known as “The Pleasant Lake Mastodon” was found in Freedom that gained fame as it showed compelling evidence of butchery and tool use, lending credence to the theory that the animals were over-hunted. Mastodon bones have been discovered along US-12, just east on Bridgewater Township, including a find in 1992 of preserved mastodon footprints which are also currently on display at U of M’s Natural History Museum. Mastodon fossils have been discovered just west of the Village of Clinton and elk fossils have been discovered in Fay Lake in Norvell Township.

Who knows what fossils are currently under your feet as you read this!

Thanks to Jaimie Schmidt, Laura Sutton, and Fritz Swanson for help with the research, maps, and photos.

William and Katherine Schlicht and children in front of their home in Sharon Township. Left to right: William, Henry, Anna, Katherine, Bertha (standing), Emma, and Clarence. Photo courtesy of Laura Sutton.

William and Katherine Schlicht in the Village of Manchester, 1940’s. Photo courtesy of Laura Sutton.

1915 Plat map of Manchester Township. William Schlicht’s property (labeled as W. J. Schlecht) where the skull was found is shown along the top. Public domain.