A new hippo tooth has been discovered that shows prehistoric hippopotamuses lived in Britain 1.5 million years ago. This gives us new insight into the land's ancient climate.
Neil Adams, University of Leicester paleobiologist, tweeted that the tooth "closely matches other fossils belonging in the extinct species Hippopotamus Antiquus".
The current largest wildlife red deer (Cervus. elaphus), are not the most well-known in Britain. It was home to megafauna just like anywhere else in the world. It was home to woolly mammoths and cave lions as well as woolly rhinos and woolly hyenas that were larger than lions and the giant hippos.
This species weighed in at 3,200 kilograms and was twice as large as modern hippos (H.amphibius; 1,500 kg, 3,310 lbs). This species' ancient remains have been discovered all over Europe, including in Britain, France, Germany, Greece, and Germany. It is obvious that Britain was connected to Europe by land back then.
Adams and his colleagues discovered the tooth in Westbury Cave, Somerset. They compared it with other hippo teeth and identified it as the left upper molar of a 1.51.07 million-year-old hippopotamus.
Adams explained that it is the first ever record of a hippo at the site and also the first known fossil of a hippo from any British site older than 750,000 year. "The new hippo is dated to an previously unknown warm period in British fossil records."
H. antiquus anatomy and diet suggest that it was more dependent on aquatic life than modern hippos. H. antiquus' eye sockets were higher up on its skull than other fossils. Its larger body mass and shorter legs made it more comfortable to swim in the water with its eyes, rather than hopping around on land to graze grass like modern hippos. An isotopic analysis of the diet suggests that the giant hippo was primarily an aquatic plant eater.
Danielle Schreve, University of London paleontologist, stated that hippos are not only amazing animals to find but also provide evidence about past climates. "Major megafaunal species, those that weigh more than a tonne, are very tolerant to temperature fluctuations. However, modern hippos can't cope with seasonal frozen water bodies, as we know.
Its presence suggests that Britain's temperature at that time was just a few degrees warmer than it is today. There were humid summers and mild winters that stayed above freezing.
The fossil from Westbury Cave extends the hippo records in Britain back to at least 300,000. Its likely age overlaps with a warm period about 1 million years ago, when hippos first began to spread north of the Alps. [6/8] Image: Adams et al. (2021) J. Quat. Sci. pic.twitter.com/jFov6Lwnlb Neil Adams (@neilfadams) October 4, 2021
Another rare fossil find from this region dates back to the Early Pleistocene. It depicts a savanna full of grassland grazers, carnivores, like the giant Hyena, with open woodlands populated with Etruscan rhinoceros and beavers and an area of water for the hippos.
According to fossil records in Europe, H. antiquus species was first known to have moved northwards from the Alps approximately 1.1 million years ago. This specimen could therefore have been part that early migration wave. Researchers suggest that it could be evidence of an earlier trip north.
This research was published by the Journal of Quaternary Science.
