PREHISTORIC ANIMAL REMAINS AT HARKSTEAD by
HAROLD E . P .
SPENCER
IN 1948 a few bones of a small elephant together with sorne remains of horse, red deer and wild ox or bison were discovered. One of the fossils is an uncut first milk tooth of mammoth which may indicate a young cow who died with her unborn " first-born." DĂźring the ensuing years this patch of foreshore was obscured but some lads from the Tower Ramparts School, Ipswich, reported some bones in June of this year shortly after a visit to the site by members of the Society. These remains were investigated at the earliest convenient time, the spot being covered at high tide, and a number of the shattered bones were removed to the Museum at Ipswich. In addition to the bones partly exposed in the brickearth, it was found some had been washed out by tidal and wave action and these were scattered in fragments over a fairly large area of the foreshore. Under these circumstances parts of two teeth of a Mammoth calf three to five years old were recovered. There was also most of the upper dentition of a wild ox of bison of which one tooth, a right Upper first molar was picked up in 1948, and a few remains of red deer and horse. It is an odd fact that the left Upper first molar of the bovine was found under one of the thigh bones of the larger elephant. We may therefore assume the various animals died at about the same time. The bones have been kept very moist for a prolonged period and when first disinterred were soft and crumbled easily, but when dried they were hard enough to handle. DĂźring their removal from the sticky clay extreme care must be used to extract them in as large fragments as possible, a most difficult task as they have been subjected to the weight of some twenty feet or more of over-lying strata which has been removed by tidal erosion in relatively recent years. It is evident from the association of the bones of the older mammoth that the entire skeleton must have been present. Part of the pelvis was recovered in 1948 with one heel bone and an upper tooth. This year most of the fragments of one thigh bone have been removed and partly restored and one shin bone. Only part of one humerus and the upper part of an ulna have been found. Over a hundred fragments of the lower jaw were collected, and these constitute the major part which has been largely restored. The teeth, which also were broken, indicate the beast was about fifteen to twenty years old. The discovery of associated fossil bones of one animal in the Stutton brickearth is an unusual occurrence, and it is even more unusual to have a similar association of the remains of two or