Walter Varcoe, who constructs skeletons of horses, is creating a skeleton of a bison using bones that are 7,000-years old that were found in Anoka, Minnesota. The skeleton is being constructed this week inside a work room of the Southern Minnesota Museum of Natural History in Blue Earth.

There is something a little bit different going on in the back room of the Southern Minnesota Museum of Natural History. And it involves a whole lot of very old bones.

A professional skeleton creator is making a bison skeleton out of 7,000-year-old bones.

How did that all come about?

“We had gotten a lot of bison bones that had been discovered in Anoka County in 1991,” museum director Jim Pollard explains. “We have had quite a few of the bones and bison skulls on display in the museum.”

But there were dozens of tubs full of the bison bones in storage, all which came from the collection discovered in Anoka. Pollard knew there were enough to construct a full size bison skeleton, and he started a search to find someone who could use the bones to create a full skeleton.

That is when he found Walter Varcoe and they started emailing about possibly construction of a full size skeleton.

“Walter agreed to do it, and that he would come here, to the museum to do it,” Pollard explains. “And now we have him here working on it.”

Before Varcoe arrived, Pollard was busy going through all the tubs of bones and sorting them by size and position in the bison body. Then he also cleaned them all.

Varcoe is from Orange County, in New York state and his previous career was in the Department of Corrections.

“I was working in a state prison and also doing ferrier work,” Varcoe says. “When I retired after 25 years, I still did ferrer work and also started working on skeletons, mainly of horses.”

He got so busy he created a company called Varcoe Equine Skeletons. He still does work with live animals for zoos in New York, including the Bronx Zoo and Queens Zoo, trimming livestock.

“My work with creating equine skeletons is mainly for universities and museums,” he says. “They are mainly used to train veterinarians.”

Varcoe says some people donate their deceased animals to the university and then are used for teaching. That is when he gets a call to work on the skeleton.

In this case it is a bison.

“When Jim told me about this small museum in Minnesota, I was intrigued,” Varcoe says. “I have found it is a really nice small town and you have a great museum here.”

Now that “Biggest Little Museum in Minnesota” is going to have another unique display. A bison skeleton that is made of 7,000-year-old bones that were discovered in Minnesota.