Friday, 25 February 2011 BBC TV's CountryFile visited the park
on Friday 25th to do a story about the local geology. Beside me
wearing the scarf is Matt Baker the presenter, with Steve
Boreham from Cambridge University's geography department, along
with his colleague Chris on the right. Matt is holding a thigh
bone of an extinct straight-tusked elephant discovered under the
beach at Coopers Beach here in East Mersea about 80 years ago.
East Mersea has been known for almost a hundred years as a place
where 100,000 year old animal bones have been found. This huge
thigh bone of a straight-tusked elephant was borrowed from
Colchester Natural History Museum where its jawbone is kept on
permanent display. These elephants were almost twice the size of
today's African elephant and weighed up to nine tonnes. They
died out at the beginning of the last Ice Age. Two other animal
bones from East Mersea pictured above, on the left is a
hippopotamus tusk alongside a molar tooth of an extinct narrow-
nosed rhinoceros. The cli