Britain and Ireland

In Britain, many sites along the coast and in the Thames Valley (including under Trafalgar Square) have produced a variety of fossils.

Many specimens are from the last interglacial period about 120,000 years ago. These fossils include a hippopotamus, the straight-tusked elephant (a huge animal four metres high at the shoulder) and the narrow-nosed rhinoceros (all extinct about 90,000 years ago). Fossils from the last glaciation which peaked about 18,000 years ago are also frequently found, including the now extinct woolly mammoth and woolly rhinoceros, together with reindeer, lemmings, musk oxen, and lions. Remains of the giant ox, which became extinct about 5,000 years ago, the brown bear, (extinct in Britain about 900 AD) and the wolf, (extinct in Britain about 1500 AD) have also been recovered.

Irish elk. Artist: Caroll.L. Fenton. Source and copyright: Patricia Vickers-Rich.

In Ireland, quite different fossils have been found. Enormous numbers of giant deer—which became extinct 10,000 years ago as a result of a period of renewed cooling—have been recovered from peat bogs. Humans played no part in their extinction, as they didn't arrive in Ireland until 2,000 years later.