Mammoths at West Bay

Recent news headlines have brought prehistoric discoveries back into the spotlight. In a new documentary, Sir David Attenborough reveals the excavation of a Mammoth Graveyard uncovered in a quarry near Swindon. Closer to home, local television recently reported that bones from several species of Mammoth and Woolly Rhinoceros have been discovered in a cave beneath the site of a new housing development near Plymouth.

Although such finds are rare in the twenty-first century, many more discoveries were made around 200 years ago, when public fascination with fossils surged — inspired in large part by the work of Mary Anning of Lyme Regis, whose groundbreaking discoveries captured imaginations across the country.

In 1809, fragments of a humerus (upper arm bone) and a femur (the bone connecting the hip and knee) belonging to a “mammot” were uncovered in the garden of Mr Way, beside the East Cliffs of what was then known as Bridport Harbour — today’s West Bay.

Mr Way wrote a letter describing the discovery, and both the letter and the bones were deposited for safekeeping with Sir Joseph Banks at the Royal College of Surgeons in London. Thanks to research by volunteers at the Discovery Centre using the digitised British Newspaper Archive, this historic document has recently come to light. The letter was originally published in the Bridport News on 23 February 1877, nearly eighty years after the bones were found, by George Brown — a descendant of James Brown, who made the original discovery while working on Mr Way’s land.

One particularly fascinating detail recorded in the letter is the description of how the cliffs were already “slipping” at that time — just as they do today — with sections of soil and turf sliding down intact from above.

We cannot be certain which species of Mammoth was found at West Bay. Sir Joseph Banks referred to the remains simply as “elephant bones.” However, the last Mammoth species known to have lived in England were Woolly Mammoths, making it entirely plausible to imagine herds of these animals roaming the tundra landscape of the Bridport area thousands of years ago.

Mammoths lived during the Pleistocene Era, from approximately 2.5 million to 11,000 years ago, throughout the Ice Ages in Europe. The largest species could exceed 4 metres in height and weigh over 8 tonnes. Their remains, however, are rarely discovered along the Jurassic Coast, where the exposed rock dates from the much earlier Mesozoic Era — between 242 million and 66 million years ago — long predating mammoths altogether.

Fossil Hunting in Dorset

If you are keen to try fossil hunting yourself, West Bay is not the safest or most productive location, due to unstable cliffs and limited fossil-bearing strata. Instead, nearby sites such as Charmouth and Lyme Regis offer safer, legally accessible beaches with rich fossil finds — guided walks are available from Charmouth Heritage Centre for beginners who wish to explore responsibly while learning more about this fascinating coastline.