Mammoth Graveyard: Ice Age discovery

James Rampton (inews.co.uk, Ice Age discovery near Swindon, via MSN); Eds., Wisdom Quarterly

Attenborough and the Mammoth Graveyard: Why an Ice Age discovery near Swindon, England, has excited archaeologists

To find the remains of Ice Age beasts, one might expect to travel to Siberia, not Swindon. But that is exactly where Sally and Neville Hollingworth, two amateur archaeologists from Wiltshire, made a spectacular find.

Exploring a quarry north of the town in 2017, they spotted something sticking up out of the ground. They were astonished to find it was the fossilized humerus – a leg bone – of a Steppe mammoth, a forerunner of the more famous woolly mammoth.

Further excavation of the site revealed three more mammoths, as well as a Steppe bison and a brown bear, all perfectly preserved in the prehistoric riverbed of the Thames.

Sally Hollingworth also disinterred a rare hand axe made of flint, lying beside the remains. As the dig progressed, more handmade tools were unearthed – suggesting there was a relationship between the animals and humans.

This story – and the discoveries still emerging from the site – is the subject of an absorbing new BBC documentary, Attenborough and the Mammoth Graveyard, airing after Christmas.

In this one-off film, Sir David Attenborough, who has been a passionate fossil-hunter since he was a small boy, joins the excavation and investigates the importance of the finds. More