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Scientists Found 8,000 Frog Bones at a Roman-Era Site in Britain—and They Finally Know Why

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Scientists Found 8,000 Frog Bones at a Roman-Era Site in Britain—and They Finally Know Why

For all the fantastic things the Romans left behind, they were also up to some really weird things. So when thousands of ancient frog bones turned up at a known settlement from Roman Britain, scientists were puzzled but figured there was a reason. And the culprit isn’t (unfortunately) a cryptic frog cult from Roman times.

A recent study by zooarchaeologists, published in Environmental Archaeology, studied the frog bones in closer detail, putting an end to what scientists call an ancient “frog mystery.” The culprits were birds of prey, specifically short-eared owls and hen harriers. But the story doesn’t end there. According to the study, people didn’t directly interact with either the frogs or the birds, but human activity at the Fens over centuries probably created conditions that resulted in this extraordinary ditch of frog bones. So, on the flip side, the discovery points to new insights on human settlements in the area.

“The mystery of these frogs has been solved—a feast of frogs that were eaten and their bones left behind by a group of owls,” Paul Clarkson, the study’s first author and a zooarchaeologist at Bournemouth University in the U.K., said in a statement.

According to Bournemouth University, researchers with the Museum of London Archaeology (MOLA) first discovered the bones between 2016 and 2018. MOLA shared details about the excavation in 2022, explaining that its team had retrieved more than four metric tons of animal bones from a site at the Fens in Cambridgeshire. According to the latest paper, the site was dated to the Middle to Late Iron Ages (400 BCE to 43 CE) but also showed signs of increased activity later in the Roman period, as improving climate and retreating water levels made the area more livable for humans.


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