Earliest evidence yet of huge hippos in Britain

Date:
October 4, 2021
Source:
University of Leicester
Summary:
Palaeobiologists have unearthed the earliest evidence yet of
hippos in the UK. Excavations at Westbury Cave in Somerset have
uncovered a million-year-old hippo tooth which shows the animal
roamed Britain much earlier than previously thought.



FULL STORY ========================================================================== Palaeobiologists have unearthed the earliest evidence yet of hippos in
the UK.


========================================================================== Excavations at Westbury Cave in Somerset, led by University of Leicester
PhD student Neil Adams, uncovered a million-year-old hippo tooth which
shows the animal roamed Britain much earlier than previously thought.

In a new study published in the Journal of Quaternary Science and
co-authored with researchers from Royal Holloway, University of London,
the tooth is identified as belonging to an extinct species of hippo called Hippopotamus antiquus, which ranged across Europe in warm periods during
the Ice Age.

It was much larger than the modern African hippo, weighing around 3
tonnes, and was even more reliant on aquatic habitats than its living
relative.

Research demonstrates that the fossil is over one million years old,
eclipsing the previous record of hippo in the UK by at least 300,000
years and filling an important gap in the British fossil record.

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.



========================================================================== "Erosion caused by the coming and going of ice sheets, as well as the
gradual uplift of the land, has removed large parts of the deposits
of this age in Britain. 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." Scientists know remarkably little about the fauna, flora and environments
in Britain between about 1.8 and 0.8 million years ago, a key period
when early humans were beginning to occupy Europe.

But new research at Westbury Cave is helping to fill in this gap. It shows
that during this interval there were periods warm and wet enough to allow hippos to migrate all the way from the Mediterranean to southern England.

Professor Danielle Schreve, Professor of Quaternary Science at Royal
Holloway and co-author of the study, said: "Hippos are not only fabulous animals to find but they also reveal evidence about past climates. Many megafaunal species (those over a tonne in weight) are quite broadly
tolerant of temperature fluctuations but in contrast, we know modern
hippos cannot cope with seasonally frozen water bodies.



==========================================================================
"Our research has demonstrated that in the fossil record, hippos are
only found in Britain during periods of climatic warmth, when summer temperatures were a little warmer than today but most importantly,
winter temperatures were above freezing." 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 are known from Germany, France and the
Netherlands and the new fossil from Somerset represents a previously
unknown part of this colonisation of northwest Europe.

This research was supported by the Palaeontological Association and the
Natural Environment Research Council (NERC).

========================================================================== Story Source: Materials provided by University_of_Leicester. Note:
Content may be edited for style and length.


========================================================================== Journal Reference:
1. Neil F. Adams, Ian Candy, Danielle C. Schreve. An Early Pleistocene
hippopotamus from Westbury Cave, Somerset, England: support
for a previously unrecognized temperate interval in the British
Quaternary record. Journal of Quaternary Science, 04 October 2021
DOI: 10.1002/ jqs.3375 ==========================================================================

Link to news story: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/10/211004104140.htm

--- up 4 weeks, 4 days, 8 hours, 25 minutes
* Origin: -=> Castle Rock BBS <=- Now Husky HPT Powered! (1:317/3)