A complete mammoth skull has been unearthed in southern England, only the second to be found in Britain. The specimen was discovered in a gravel pit in the Cotswolds and is estimated to be about 50,000 years old. The only other complete specimen found in the UK is displayed in the Natural History Museum in London. Scientists will attempt to date the mammoth skull using radiocarbon methods and will also use it to study the evolutionary history of mammoths. The skull was found last week by Dr Neville Hollingworth, a palaeontologist who works at the Natural Environment Research Council. Dr Hollingworth's colleague, Mark O'Dell, helped him dig the specimen up."It was beautifully preserved, almost as if it died yesterday," said Dr Hollingworth. "It was quite amazing, we didn't expect to find anything like this. All I saw was a small piece of bone sticking out at the side of this clay face which had gravel in it."We started to dig and it got bigger and bigger and bigger. And after about 10 minutes of digging we realised that we had something a little bit more than just a bone fragment."Then seven hours later we uncovered a complete mammoth skull and it was just incredible."

Dr Adrian Lister, a mammoth expert from University College London, has carried out a preliminary analysis of the skull.


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Very cool!

I have a book on the American Indians. In the book it says that 27,000 years
ago ancient Eskimos crossed the Bering Strait between Alaska and the US mainland. As the waters rose due to the ending ice-age they were cut off from
their once homeland.
The end result were the Native American Tribes.

Sorry, that doesn't have anything to do with the woolly mammoth in England,
but whenever I hear of mammoths I think of the American Indians.