In the summer of 2001, bones and teeth of hippopotamus were found in a sand and gravel pit near Norton Subcourse, Norfolk. When the importance of the find became apparent, a major excavation campaign was undertaken in 2004. The work recovered an impressive array of early Middle Pleistocene fossils, including numerous hippopotamus bones, many of which show evidence of having been gnawed by hyaenas.
Today, the fossil-rich deposits are deeply buried beneath the modern landscape and are only accessible when uncovered during aggregate quarrying. The succession includes a basal sequence of Early Pleistocene shallow marine gravels, which are overlain by fluvial clays and silts, a woody peat representing an alder woodland, organic silts (containing most of the large mammal fossils), followed by riverine sands and gravels deposited by a fast-flowing river. The sequence is capped by Anglian Stage glacial deposits. The pre-Anglian fluvial deposits probably formed part of the Bytham River that drained from the English Midlands into East Anglia and the southern North Sea.
The fine-grained channel-fill sediments yielded a diverse array of plant and insect fossils, together with freshwater molluscs and ostracods, consistent with deposition during the early part of an interglacial.The landscape was dominated by a large river and freshwater wetlands with alder carr.The wetland habitats merged with extensive areas of grassland and deciduous woodland on drier ground.Beetles and the presence of pond tortoise suggest that the climate was warmer than the present day. Dating evidence is provided by a number of now-extinct molluscs, ostracods and mammals. These suggest an age early in the ‘Cromerian complex’, possibly older than West Runton, but do not rule out a pre-‘Cromerian complex’ age.
No artefacts or other signs of human activity were found at the site.
