Dozens of species were recovered - not just elephantine in nature. About four hundred bones were recovered, including those of various extinct deer, bovids, rhino, giant beaver, bear, big cats, and birds - plus 10 tonnes of sediment still to be sieved for all the microfaua. The most problematical aspect of the excavation, once the few thousand tonnes of overburden had been removed, was removing the large bones and skull. These had to be wrapped carefully in tissue and foil, then be wrapped with many layers of plaster of paris with scrim roll, and heavy-duty wire mesh, with splints of metal and wood added for good measure. Once these rigid supportive jackets had set, several people were needed, and occasionally cranes, to move them off site.

The elephant can have so many superlatives justifiably thrown at it. The skeleton finally ended up being, amazingly, 85% complete. That not only makes it the oldest relatively complete skeleton in the UK, but it is the most complete specimen of its species anywhere in the world, by far - the other two most complete skeletons of this species are about ten and fifteen percent complete, residing in Russia and Germany. Therefore this specimen is of great scientific importance.

However, importantly, it is also impressively big - possibly the largest elephant skeleton in the world. Mammuthus trogontherii is probably the biggest species of elephant to have lived, and this seems to have been quite a large adult male. It would have stood about four and a half metres high at the shoulder, much bigger than todays elephants, and would have weighed about ten tonnes - a modern African bull elephant would weigh only about five tonnes. It would have been much bigger than most dinosaurs.

The sheer size and weight of the limb bones, and their very nature, gave us our biggest problems. Also, the material had suffered all sorts of damage including scavenging by hyaenas, weathering by the elements and trampling by other elephants. And, as it lay in the ground for over half a million years, several major glacial periods sent glaciers a kilometre thick to bear down upon them.

The damaged nature of the specimens has been compounded by their age.

Over 700,000 years they have lost all their collagen and other organic material, reducing their strength and flexibility to the bare minimum - all we are left with is the brittle mineral matter of the bones.

We investigated the chemical nature of the bones (see the reading list below) and found that although pyrite minerals were present in small quantities, they were stable and there had been no secondary mineralisation of the bones over this time - they are truly sub-fossil. Had we left them another 50 million years to fossilise properly, our task would have been much easier!