'Mammoth leg bone' found buried on Norfolk beach

Dan Chamberlain cleaning the bone for dating and testing

What is thought to be the lower leg bone of a fossilised mammoth has been found on a beach in North Norfolk.

The bone, now being cleaned ahead of tests, could be between 500,000 and two million years old.

Archaeologists Dan Chamberlain and Russell Yeomans made the find near West Runton where a full mammoth skeleton was unearthed in 1990.

Fossils are often found as cliffs crumble between Sheringham and Happisburgh.

The cliffs are the raised bed of a fresh water river that existed long before the ice ages and contain the fossilised bones of many now extinct animals that roamed the area, the archaeologists said.

The bone will be dated and tested by experts at Norfolk's archaeological unit.