Get the Popular Science daily newsletter💡 Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent every weekday. Charles “Buffalo” Jones invented the cow-buffalo hybrid in 1888. The cow-buffalo hybrid has a sad origin storyThe cattalo didn’t emerge from a laboratory, or even from particularly sound science. “Buffalo Jones is enthusiastic over an enterprise in which he hopes to make a big fortune,” the Kansas City Star reported in 1897. In A Century Later, Popular Science revisits our archives to see how past predictions and discoveries have held up 100 years later.