Fossil hunters find pre-historic 'elephant' bones at site where UK mammoth discovered

Amateur palaeontologists claim to have uncovered pre-historic elephant bones in a cliff where Britain's oldest mammoth was discovered nearly 35 years ago.

The remains were exposed following recent storms in West Runton on the north Norfolk coast.

Fossil hunters believe they date back between 650,000 and 800,000 years and belong to a steppe elephant - similar to today's Indian elephant but bigger - and found in warmer climates than mammoths.

John Clayden has been searching the cliffs in Norfolk since 1982 and was part of the team that helped uncover the first West Runton mammoth in 1990.

On Tuesday, he was in Sheringham collecting some furniture when he decided to nip along the coast and see if the recent storms had uncovered anything.

"Immediately I noticed an atlas vertebra - part of one - sticking out and saw a rather nice tow bone," he said.

"It's gobsmacking. Absolutely amazing. The adrenaline - you're looking at part of an animal that no one else has looked at."

He immediately alerted fellow fossil hunters in the area and a team has spent the last two days uncovering "the best part of a leg bone" including the humerus, ulna, and radius, as well as part of a tusk.

The Norfolk coastline is a site of special scientific interest and fossil hunters can only dig out bones that have already been exposed by storms and tides.

Mr Clayden said he and others would visit after every storm to see what had been revealed.

"We're actually rescuing these bones," he said. "You can see the condition of the weather today. It wiped all of that out this morning, literally. If we don't get in there, these bones will end up in fragments all across the beach."

The amateur palaeontologist said the diggers were going horizontally into the cliff to remove the bones and that they were careful to stay safe.

He urged the general public to stay clear of the area, adding: "We are very aware of the cliffs and what they can do so we make sure things are safe and there is always someone observing the cliffs above."

The fossil hunters said they had tipped off local museums, as well as experts at the University of Cambridge.

The first West Runton Mammoth was discovered in 1990 when locals Margaret and Harold Hems spotted what looked like a large bone sticking out of the cliff.

More bones turned up a year later and Norfolk Museums Service launched a three-month dig in 1995 with the Norfolk Archaeological Unit.

The excavation unearthed four-fifths of a mammoth skeleton.

It was the most complete example of a so-called Steppe mammoth ever discovered in Britain.

The Steppe mammoth was an ancestor of the woolly mammoth and would have lived in open forest and grassland, eating grass and other vegetation

It would have been four metres tall at the shoulder and weighed 10 tonnes - twice as much as one of today's African elephants.

Excavations revealed the mammoth was a male who died at the age of 42 in a fresh water river bed.

It is thought the animal was disabled by having a bad leg and probably fell into the mud and was unable to get up.

Most of the West Runton mammoth is in storage at the Norfolk Collections Centre at Gressenhall Farm and Workhouse, but there is a dedicated display at Cromer Museum as well as a small display in Norwich Castle Museum.

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