Earliest evidence yet of huge hippos in Britain

Date:
October 4, 2021
Source:
University of Leicester

Excavations at Westbury Cave in Somerset, led by University of Leicester PhD student Neil Adams, uncovered a million-year-old hippo tooth which shows the animal roamed Britain much earlier than previously thought.

In a new study published in the Journal of Quaternary Science and co-authored with researchers from Royal Holloway, University of London, the tooth is identified as belonging to an extinct species of hippo called Hippopotamus antiquus, which ranged across Europe in warm periods during the Ice Age.

It was much larger than the modern African hippo, weighing around 3 tonnes, and was even more reliant on aquatic habitats than its living relative.

Research demonstrates that the fossil is over one million years old, eclipsing the previous record of hippo in the UK by at least 300,000 years and filling an important gap in the British fossil record.

Neil Adams, PhD researcher in the Centre for Palaeobiology Research at the University of Leicester and Earth Collections Project Officer at the Oxford University Museum of Natural History, said:

"It was very exciting to come across a hippo tooth during our recent excavations at Westbury Cave. It is not only the first record of hippo from the site, but also the first known hippo fossil from any site in Britain older than 750,000 years.

More:
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/10/211004104140.htm