Levallois artefacts. Oxygen Isotope Stages 8 and 7.		Dolphin vertebra from Grays Thurrock, Essex, with probable carnivore tooth marks. This rare fossil of a cetacean indicates a high sea level and estuarine conditions nearby.
	Hominid alteration of bones. Cutmarks on a set of brown bear metapodials from Grays Thurrock, Essex (OIS 9). Spectacular evidence for human accumulation of a large mammal assemblage comes from an extensive early nineteenth century collection of vertebrate remains recovered from clay pits at Grays. The cutmarks went un-noticed until recently, and artefacts were either not recognised or the pit diggers and fossil collectors did not recover them.
	Aurochs, Bos primigenius, skull from Ilford, Essex. This bovid is typically associated with temperate stages, both interglacials and interstadials, from the Middle Pleistocene to the early Holocene in Britain.		Pontnewydd Cave, Wales. Upper molars of Pontnewydd 4 dated to OIS 7 showing taurodontism characteristic of Neanderthals
	Isotopes: Mammoth (Mammuthus trogontherii) and straight-tusked elephant (Palaeoloxodon antiquus) molars from Ilford, Essex, illustrating the co-occurrence of two species traditionally thought not to occur together. The occurrence of the mammoth in temperate wooded episodes in the Middle Pleistocene illustrates an ecological 'shift' through time in the mammoth lineage, which in the last cold stage is characteristic of cold steppe-tundra. Analysis of isotopes provides a method to detect evolutionary changes in diet, ecology and climatic preferences.

All images on this site are in copyright and unauthorized reproduction is strictly forbidden.

Images may be printed out or downloaded from this site for personal reference only, provided they are not subsequently copied, published, scanned, photographed, broadcast or reproduced in any way whatsoever.

Back to Picture Library Main Page