Buffalo Trails
Their big hooves dig deep trenches. And in the right kind of soil their feet pick up big chunks of mud, fling them around and build the trails higher causing a ridged portion of thick topsoil. Not fluvial sand and gravel as would be evident if they had been disintegration trenches.
A North Dakota geologist who wrote about (italic) Bison Trails in North Dakota is John P. Bluemle. He was employed by the North Dakota Geological Survey from 1962 and served as ND State Geologist 14 years from 1990 until 2004. Bluemle cited research by Lee Clayton.
Bison trails and their Geologic Significance’ by Lee Clayton, a North Dakotan, was published in the national magazine (Italic) Geology, Sep 1975.
The trench-like features seen throughout ND from
This is the way buffalo make trails. In Yellowstone Park, even when they have lots of room to wander or bunch up, they still prefer to “follow the leader” when they’re headed somewhere. In this photo the snow is deep so the stronger leaders break a trail in the deep snow for the others to follow, but even without the deep snow, buffalo still tend to trail single file. Photo NPS, YP.
were initially interpreted as caused by glacial action, with bedrock joints and faults.. They have also been listed as glacial disintegration trenches, a kind of long, narrow depression resulting from the melting of an ice-cored crevasse filling.
However, the disintegration-trench hypothesis was proven wrong when it was pointed out that these trenches are found throughout southwestern North Dakota—well beyond the limit of the last glaciation.
Sources:
Clayton, Lee, 1970b, Bison trails and their geologic significance: Geological Society of America Abstracts with Programs, v. 2, p. 381.
Clayton, Lee, 1975, Bison trails and their geologic significance: Geology, p. 498 – 500.
Berg, Francie M,Jan 14, 2022, Blog: BuffaloTrailsandTales.com: Can you Find Buffalo Trails where You Live?