Newark resident Keith Marriott believes he has found hippo bones in Southwell
A man is appealing for help to identify bones he found in Southwell that he believes may have belonged to a hippo.
Keith Marriott, of Rutland Avenue, Newark, found the bones more than 50 years ago while excavating inside sewage tanks.
Keith has kept the bones safe in his collection ever since, but has only recently realised that they may have belonged to the animal, which traditionally lives in Africa.
Last month, scientists at the University of Leicester found the first-known British hippo tooth, a discovery that got Keith thinking about his own find.
“I was undecided. I’ve had them in my collection since 1968 when I found them and with it coming up on the telly, it just prompted me to see what it was,” said Keith.
“We got the website up and it shows you the close-up photographs of the teeth they’d found and they are identical.”
Keith believes he has three hippo teeth, a tusk and part of a jaw bone, which were underneath a layer of gravel.
“Out came a tusk and with the tusk there were parts of a bone that had disintegrated,” Keith said.
“It was like a jigsaw puzzle when I dried it out. I wasn’t certain what it was, I didn’t know hippos were around in those days.
“The jaw bone was nearly intact but it just disintegrated as it got to the air.”
Keith, who is retired, said he had tried to contact the University of Leicester about his discovery, but had received no reply.
When asked whether a hippo came to mind when Keith found the bones, he said: “It did come to mind because it was so large. I thought it can’t be a wild boar because it’s too big.”
Keith worked for British Waterways for more than 20 years and has a fossil collection from across Nottinghamshire.
He owns several other bones, including what he believes to be a mammoth’s tooth and tusk, fossils of ancient trees and a thumbnail-size shark’s tooth.
If you have information that could help Keith in his quest to confirm the identity of the bones, email marriottkeith9@gmail.com