8,000 frog bones in Roman ditch traced to ancient birds of prey feast

An archeological mystery involving thousands of tiny bones has been solved and offers an unusual insight into Britain's ancient wildlife. What was thought to be an amazing frog graveyard found in a ditch near Cambridge turned out to be the remains of a seasonal feeding ground used by birds of prey almost 1,700 years ago. After almost a decade of investigation, the researchers traced the remains to a group of hunting owls, showing how changes in the landscape in Roman Britain helped create the conditions for a giant amphibian feast.A rare find outside CambridgeAccording to reports in BBC and Phys Org, around 8,000 frog bones were unearthed between 2016 and 2018 during archeological investigations linked to the National Highways A14 Cambridge to Huntingdon improvement scheme. The remains were recovered from one ditch close to the site of an Iron Age roundhouse at Bar Hill, near Cambridge.The concentration of bones puzzled archeologists especially since evidence from the site suggested that the ditch filled in only a year. This meant that the accumulation could not be readily explained by a slow process over several generations.The discovery prompted further investigation and Bournemouth University researcher Dr Paul Clarkson asked Museum of London Archeology (MOLA) senior zooarchaeologist Dr Vicki Ewens to look closer at the remains.