Swindon’s mammoth graveyard
Fossil hunters find Ice Age bones... and clues to Neanderthal hunters
A HUSBAND and wife team of amateur fossil hunters have found a 220,000-year-old mammoth graveyard described as ‘one of the most important discoveries in British palaeontology’.
Neville and sally Hollingworth were intrigued when they used Google Earth to zero in on a freshly dug gravel quarry during lockdown last year.
When they visited the site on a prehistoric course of the thames near swindon, Wiltshire, they spotted the top of a huge fossilised leg bone sticking out of mud. they then found a hand axe used by Neanderthal hunters buried nearby.
Further investigation led to the unearthing of five steppe mammoths – two adults, two juveniles and an infant – in an extraordinary state of preservation.
Ben Garrod, professor of evolutionary biology at the University of East anglia, said it was ‘incredibly rare’ to find complete mammoth skeletons.
‘this is one of the most important discoveries in British palaeontology’, he said. He told the Observer a glacial flood could have washed the mammoths into the waterway, or they could have been corralled there by Neanderthal hunters.
‘Did they chance upon this bunch of dead mammoths and have a mammoth buffet?’ he added. ‘Or was it just really muddy? With elephants today, if a juvenile gets stuck, often the adults won’t leave the site. they’ll try to help them.’
some of the bones display possible butchery marks. the earliest mammoths came from africa about five million years ago. the steppe was the largest species at 15 tons – between two and three times the size of an african elephant. the Ice age creatures lived from about 1.8million years ago to 200,000 years ago.
In a BBC documentary on the find to be broadcast next week, sir David attenborough joins a team of archaeologists to explore how the bones were discovered and what the site reveals about early humans in Britain. ÷attenborough and the Mammoth Graveyard is on BBC1 at 8pm on December 30.