Children find prehistoric bear bones in Bristol school playground » Education » 24dash.com

Children were praised by an archaeologist today after unearthing the bones of a prehistoric bear while playing pirates in their school playground.

Immy Price, nine, Billy Thomas-Connolly and Mary Barker, both seven, found two teeth and a leg bone belonging to a 40,000-year-old cave bear, which once hunted on the Bristol Downs.

The female bear's femur was discovered under decking in the garden of the Bristol Steiner School in Redland Hill, where the children are pupils.

Immy said: "I was playing pirates with my friends and it was my job to sort out the deck. There was a big pile of rubble and as I was clearing it I came across what looked like an animal bone.

"I ran inside and washed it off, then I took it to Bristol Museum. A few days later they phoned me back saying it was actually the bone of a cave bear, from the last Ice Age and it was 40,000 years old. It was very exciting.

"Over the years the land where our school stands has been a car park, a cow field and a school for boys. We did think it might just have been a cow bone.

"Billy and Mary found the bear teeth at Christmas, and after that everybody was digging to find some bones. It's amazing to think I found something so old."

Dr Tim Ewin, curator of geology at Bristol Museum, said Immy's find was a femur belonging to a mature female cave bear. The teeth were one of its canines and a molar.

Dr Ewin said: "This creature looked rather like a grizzly bear, but larger, weighing about 400kg. Its body was about 3.5 metres long and one metre across the shoulder.

"They roamed Durdham Downs around 40,000 years ago - at the time the area was right on edge of an ice sheet. Bristol would have been like the Tundra back then.

"We know there were quite alot of cave bears about in the area. The children's find is incredibly important from a research point of view because they will help us discover more about exactly how many there were, how big they were and what they ate. You can determine the bear's age by the teeth.

"I would have loved to have found something like this when I was a kid. There certainly weren't any bones in my school playground."

Helen Nicholls, administrator at the Bristol Steiner School, said: "The children found the bone under the decking in the garden. When Immy brought it in and mud fell away we could see it was the hip bone of a large animal.

"They are thrilled. It's a dream come true for them to find something like this in the playground. They keep looking too; the bones were probably washed down here from the Downs, and it's likely there are more there to be found."