.uk Ebbsfleet Elephant butchery

The Ebbsf leet elephant

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Making a killing in the Thames Estuary above Rich fossil palaeoenvironmental remains from the Ebbsfleet elephant site provide a remarkable record of the climate and habitat in the Hoxnian, showing that the elephant lived and died at a time of peak interglacial warmth (probably slightly warmer than the present-day), when the Ebbsfleet was a lush, wooded tributary of the Thames, containing a quiet, almost stagnant swamp. Here, hominins preyed on the gigantic straighttusked elephant.

n 2004 the skeleton of an elephant still surrounded by the flints used to butcher it some 400,000 year s ago was discovered by Oxford Ar chaeology. Now, over nine years of study has shed new light on Palaeolithic activity in Britain. It also provides a rare glimpse of an English countryside alien to modern eyes.

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current archaeology | www.archaeology.co.uk

November 2013 |

November 2013 |