October
12
/ 2021
Hippopotamus antiquus, or the European hippopotamus, is a now extinct species of giant hippo that once roamed Europe much before the last glacial period. In the much explored Westbury Cave, in Somerset, a fossilized upper molar of the hippopotamus antiquus has been discovered, dated to between 1 and 2 million years ago. This discovery is the subject of a recently published open-access study in The Journal of Quarterly Science. Up until now, the earliest fossil example of ancient giant hippo discovered in Britain dated back 750,000 years, so this find at least doubles that figure, claims Neil Adams, the lead author of the study and PhD student at the University of Leicester. "The tooth closely matches other fossils belonging to
