Attenborough and the Mammoth Graveyard

Sir David Attenborough and the excavation of Ice Age mammoth remains

In 2017, in a gravel quarry near Swindon, two amateur fossil hunters found an extraordinary collection of Ice Age mammoth remains and a stone ‘hand axe’ made by a Neanderthal.

Sir David Attenborough joins biologist Prof. Ben Garrod and a team of archaeologists and palaeontologists as they carefully excavate this prehistoric crime scene. Why were the mammoths here and how did they die? Could the Neanderthals have killed these Ice Age giants? The team searches for clues to unravel this Ice Age mystery.

Mammoth bones found in the UK often date to tens of thousands of years ago, but the bones here are hundreds of thousands of years old. As the team finds more stone tools lying nearby they realise this could be a once in a generation discovery offering a unique window into a period of prehistory we know very little about.