Million-year-old hippo tooth found in Somerset cave

There is new evidence to suggest hippos may have roamed across Somerset. Credit: PA

Experts have unearthed the earliest evidence yet of hippos living in the UK after recent excavation work in Somerset.

An operation at Westbury Cave - led by the University of Leicester PhD student Neil Adams - uncovered a one-million-year-old hippo tooth which shows the animal did roam the area much earlier than previously thought.

The tooth belongs to an extinct species of hippo called the Hippopotamus antiquus, which ranged across Europe in warm periods during the Ice Age.

It was much larger than its modern-day African descendant, weighing around three tonnes, and was even more reliant on aquatic habitats than its living relative.

The tooth found in the Somerset cave belongs to an extinct hippo. Credit: University of Leicester

Neil Adams, PhD researcher in the Centre for Palaeobiology Research at the University of Leicester and Earth Collections Project Officer at the Oxford University Museum of Natural History, said: “It was very exciting to come across a hippo tooth during our recent excavations at Westbury Cave.

"It is not only the first record of hippo from the site, but also the first known hippo fossil from any site in Britain older than 750,000 years.

“Our comparisons with sites across Europe show that Westbury Cave is an important exception and the new hippo dates to a previously unrecognised warm period in the British fossil record.”

By examining the European fossil record, the research team show that the Westbury Cave hippo was likely to have lived during a particularly warm period around 1.1 to 1.0 million years ago.

Hippo remains of this age have previously been found in Germany, France and the Netherlands - but never in the UK.