One of the world's most complete and revealing fossil finds was the topic of the first of BBC Radio 4's Fascinating Deaths series. The West Runton Elephant was discovered in 1990 after cliff erosion at the north Norfolk beach exposed a pelvis bone. The rest of the skeleton was buried 20 metres under the cliff and wasn't fully excavated until 1995. The elephant was an early type of mammoth, which roamed the county around 700,000 years ago. The animal, which was in its prime at around 40-years-old, would have weighed 10 tonnes - nearly twice the size of an African elephant. Although the remains were hidden for thousands of years, they bear clues to its premature death. In the documentary, programme maker Jessica Holm, from Bristol's Natural History Unit, visits the scene of the animal's death before looking at its remains at Norwich Castle Museum. With sabre-tooth cats and spotted hyenas in the frame as the culprits, the facts of its demise - preserved in the bones - are revealed during the programme. Jessica also gets to meet Harold and Margaret Hems, who found the first fossil bones, and talks to Nigel Larkin, Norfolk Museums' curator of geology, and two researchers who are working on the skeleton, Professor Tony Stuart and Dr Eleanor Clarke. If your appetite for discovery is whetted, then you can now see some of the West Runton Elephant's bones on display at the recently re-opened Cromer Museum. - Fascinating Deaths was broadcast on Tuesday 11 April, 2006, and you can listen to it again by using the link on the right-hand side of this page.
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