The Cromer Forest Bed is a geological formation in
Norfolk,
England. It consists of river gravels, estuary and floodplain sediments predominantly clays and muds as well as sands along the coast of northern Norfolk. It is the type locality for the
Cromerian Stage of the
Pleistocene between 0.8 and 0.5 million years ago., The deposit itself range varies in age from about 2 to 0.5 million years ago. It is about 6 metres thick and is
exposed in cliff section near the town of
West Runton. For over a century the bed, named after the local town of
Cromer, has been famous for its assemblage of
fossil mammal remains, containing the diverse remains of numerous taxa, including deer,
carnivora
Carnivora is a Clade, monophyletic order of Placentalia, placental mammals consisting of the most recent common ancestor of all felidae, cat-like and canidae, dog-like animals, and all descendants of that ancestor. Members of this group are f ...
ns and birds. Although most of the forest bed is now obscured by coastal defence, the Cromer Forest Bed continues to be eroded and is rich in fossils including the skeletal remains of the
West Runton Mammoth
The West Runton Mammoth is a fossilized skeleton of a steppe mammoth (''Mammuthus trogontherii'') found in the West Runton Cliffs, cliffs of West Runton in the county of Norfolk, England in 1990. The find is the largest nearly complete mammoth ske ...
which was discovered in 1990. The oldest human footprints outside Africa, the
Happisburgh footprints as well as
handaxes and
bison
Bison are large bovines in the genus ''Bison'' (Greek: "wild ox" (bison)) within the tribe Bovini. Two extant and numerous extinct species are recognised.
Of the two surviving species, the American bison, ''B. bison'', found only in North Ame ...
bones with cut marks were also found in layers considered to belong to this deposit near the town of
Happisburgh.
See also
*
Cromerian Stage
*
Happisburgh
*
Pakefield
References
Further reading
*Bowen, D.Q., 1978, ''Quaternary geology: a stratigraphic framework for multidisciplinary work. '' Pergamon Press, Oxford, United Kingdom. 221 pp.
*West, R.G., 1980, ''The pre-glacial Pleistocene of the Norfolk and Suffolk Coasts'' Cambridge University Press.
*Ehlers, J., P. L. Gibbard, and J. Rose, eds., 1991, ''Glacial deposits in Great Britain and Ireland'' Balkema, Rotterdam. 580 pp
*Mangerud, J., J. Ehlers, and P. Gibbard, 2004, ''Quaternary Glaciations: Extent and Chronology 1: Part I Europe'', Elsevier, Amsterdam.
*Sibrava, V., Bowen, D.Q, and Richmond, G.M., 1986, ''Quaternary Glaciations in the Northern Hemisphere, Quaternary Science Reviews'', vol. 5, pp. 1–514.
External links
Gibbard, P.L., S. Boreham, K.M. Cohen and A. Moscariello, 2007
''Global correlation tables for the Quaternary'' Subcommission on Quaternary Stratigraphy, Department of Geography, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, England.
Stone Age Britain
Pleistocene
Archaeology of Norfolk
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