Highways Agency

THE SOUTH EAST

A13 Wennington to Mar Dyke

A Lion in Essex

Excavations in the Thames Estuary at Aveley, in Essex uncovered an exciting range of fossils, including the remains of a very large lion, brown bear, wolf, horse, red deer, rhinoceros, beaver, mole, barbastelle bat, water vole and pond terrapin. The richly-organic deposits also preserved remains of birds, amphibians, shells and beetles.

A major find was the bones of a jungle cat (Felis chaus) - now found only in North Africa, India and south east Asia. The name is a misnomer - they are commonly found in marshland and are often called swamp cats. They stand about 40cms (16ins) high.

Much larger bones were found from a giant ox (Bos primigenius), a prehistoric aurochs and the forerunner of our domestic cattle. They were long-horned and stood two metres high at the shoulder. They died out in Britain in the Bronze Age. The skeleton is now resting in the Natural History Museum in London.

The fossils were found in sediments which were laid down by the Thames approximately 200,000 years ago during the Middle Pleistocene period. They were uncovered during work on the Wennington to Mar Dyke section of the A13.

The climate during this interglacial period was at least as warm as today's and environmental reconstruction based on the findings shows that it was an area of marshy vegetation close to the river, with extensive areas of open grassland and isolated stands of woodland. The exposed sediments were similar to those excavated by the Natural History Museum to the north of Aveley village in the 1960s, when skeletons of the woolly mammoth (Mammuthus primigenus) and of straight-tusked elephant (Palaeoloxodon antiquus) were found. The latest evaluation of the area, by Essex County Council's field archaeology group, supported by the Highways Agency, began in 1992 with the examination of core samples and the digging of small pits. It was followed by intensive rescue excavation and recording between November 1996 and May 1998, by Dr Danielle Schreve of Durham University and Dr Peter Allen.

English Nature has identified another area of deposits close to the new road, which has been notified for future scheduling as a site of special scientific interest.

A27 Brighton and Hove Bypass

Post-excavation work, including analysis of six major sites of prehistoric and Roman date has been completed by South Eastern Archaeological Services, who investigated chalk downland settlement and land use from the Mesolithic to the present day. Two important and previously-unknown Middle Bronze Age settlements were discovered at Mile Oak and Downsview. At one of these, Mile Oak, an area of Late Bronze Age metalworking was investigated. The archive is being deposited at Brighton Museum.