The making of Attenborough and the Mammoth Graveyard

The life of any university academic is a mix of many things, and it’s that diversity within the work that I enjoy most about my career. I love teaching my undergraduate students, following wild chimpanzees around African forests, helping conservation charities achieve their goals, and engaging with the public at the fantastic Norwich Science Festival.

But I must admit that standing in a quarry with Sir David Attenborough - who is a UEA honorary graduate - and a multidisciplinary team of experts as we excavated a whole herd of mammoths was up there with the best moments of my career so far.

Back in 2017 I received a very unusual message. A couple had attended a talk I’d given at a science festival a few weeks before and thought I’d be interested in their discovery. To call husband and wife team Sally and Neville Hollingworth amateur palaeontologists gives little away with regards to just how knowledgeable - and how prolific - this pair are. Like so many people with a passion, they are both enthusiastic and methodical in their approach to finding and preserving fossils.

On this occasion, they were hoping to find a previously unexposed Jurassic bed, left undisturbed for over 100 million years. They’d approached the landowner and set off looking for ammonites, belemnites, urchins, and maybe even the bones from a huge reptilian marine predator or two. What they didn’t expect to find was a much more recent layer above, and for this to be littered with the ice age remains of a number of mammoths.

And where was this new, scientifically important site stuffed full of mammoth remains? Well, think less Siberia and more Swindon. Just outside Swindon, in fact. While it's always great to carry out fieldwork in far flung and remote locations around the planet, it’s worth remembering that there are still incredibly important scientific discoveries to be made, just metres from where you are now, even if those metres happen to be below you.

The nation’s favourite naturalist

The science is essential, but so too is the inclusion of others from outside the scientific community. If we’ve learned nothing else fighting COVID-19 it’s the importance of empowering the public to engage with the scientific narrative.  Sharing science takes many different forms and all work well on some level or another. With science communication and engagement modules run at UEA by Dr Tony Blake, the brilliant work performed by UEA’s Dr Sam Fox with the Youth STEMM Awards, and the constant work from the University's Outreach and Events team at everything from science festivals to Christmas lectures, our own little campus-based microcosm encapsulates just how important, and popular, science engagement is.

So, when I set the wheels in motion to get DigVentures running our newly found secret site, I turned to a mammoth task of my own. I set about getting the discovery made into a BBC One documentary, with the nation’s favourite naturalist – Sir David Attenborough.

It can be an incredibly difficult process to get a film like this made, and time was of the essence. Our biggest hurdle? We didn’t know what was still to be discovered. Sounds obvious, but productions don’t like wild goose chases, and wild megafauna chasers are even more expensive. And so I decided to approach David first, certain that his involvement would help seal the deal. Fortunately we were at a conference together and just before he headed onto the stage, I handed him my phone, open on the photo reel, and let him see the finds from himself. After an excited reaction, he asked me where the site was, and I think it’s fair to say his eyes lit up on discovering it was barely an hour from his home.

That did the trick. It’s harder to turn down a documentary with so many unknowns when the big man himself has already signed up…

And working alongside David is, as I’m sure so many millions of viewers of Planet Earth, A Perfect Planet, et al. can image, an absolute treat. He retains that childlike spark of joy that initially drew so many of us into a career in science. He’d be the first to say he’s just another part of the team and is no more important than anyone else, but it is hard to ignore the moment when you’re crouched down in a muddy trench, alongside other experts and a film crew, uncovering find after find, knowing so many others will get to see this moment – and Sir David Attenborough is right beside you.