THE LAST INTERGLACIAL NON-MARINE MOLLUSCA 9
Last Interglacial (Ipswichian) Non-Marine
Mollusca from Aveley, Essex
By John Cooper
(Department of Palaeontology, British Museum (Natural
History), London, SW7 5BD)
Abstract. The mollusc faunas from a section containing the
bones of a straight-tusked elephant and a mammoth in Last
Interglacial (Ipswichian) deposits at Aveley, Essex, are recorded
and are compared with those found at Ilford, Ipswich and Tra-
falgar Square. The correlation of these sites, and the inferred
environment in which the molluscs and elephants lived are dis-
cussed.
The pit of the Tunnel Cement Company at Sandy Lane
Aveley, South Ockenden, Essex (TQ 558807) is worked for
London Clay (Lower Eocene) used in the manufacture of
cement. It attracted nationwide publicity in August 1964 follow-
ing the discovery in the overlying Drift deposits there of
Pleistocene elephant bones by Mr John Hesketh, an amateur
geologist. He reported his find to the British Museum
(Natural History), suspecting that the bones belonged to a com-
plete skeleton. During the following three weeks his suspicions
were largely confirmed, and a fairly complete, though crushed
skeleton of a woolly mammoth, Mammuthus primigenius
(Blumenbach) was excavated by a team from the Museum.
During the course of the excavation the bones of a second ele-
phant were discovered close to and partly underlying the first
skeleton, at about one foot (30 cm) beneath it. This proved to
be a straight-tusked elephant, Palaeoloxodon antiquus (Falconer
& Cautley). Thanks to generous help from the Tunnel Cement
Company, both elephants were raised and transported to the
British Museum (Natural History) where they can now be seen
in the new Fossil Mammal Gallery.
Associated with and below these fossils in the sections were
fragments of wood and other plant detritus and occasional insect
remains (including dung beetles). Molluscs were very common
in the P. antiquus layers but unknown in the M. primigenius
layer as the conditions here were too acid to permit their pre-
servation.
The discovery of the elephants was of special interest for
two reasons. First, the close association of skeletons of straight-
tusked elephant and mammoth was surprising. The former has
often been regarded as an interglacial species, the latter as an in-
dicator of less temperate climatic conditions. This raises some
interesting points. One possibility is that these two animals
were almost contemporary, living under climatic conditions
agreeable to both, but perhaps in different surroundings. P.