Woolly mammoth bone confirms beyond doubt that Scotland was a stamping ground for elephant ancestors

dailyrecord.co.uk:

Scotland was undoubtedly roamed by woolly mammoths, it has been confirmed.A bone belonging to the elephant ancestor was finally certified as a genuine mammoth femur - 45,000 years after it died at Loch Ryan, Galloway.The final confirmation came five years after the bone was found on a beach near Stranraer by Nic Coombey, co-ordinator of the Solway Coastwise project.The femur was the first ever bone to be confirmed in Scotland after teeth had been discovered elsewhere.Greeting the big breakthrough, Dr Andrew Kitchener, National Museum of Scotland principal curator of vertebrates, said: “We are pleased to report that this find is just as exciting as we first suspected.“We can confirm that it is indeed a mammoth bone, specifically a femur, dating to around 45,000 years old.“Separately, we have identified a mammoth tooth from the area dating to at least 46,000 years old, and so we can say with reasonable certainty that there were mammoths roaming Galloway at this time.”Nic Coombey was out walking on the beach when he found the bone and instinctively suspected it was more interesting than an old piece of driftwood.He said was about 2ft in length, and much bigger than any other bone he had previously found in the area.He said previously that he had spotted a @great big bone” on the beach.He added: “It was the size of the bone that really stood out - it was much bigger than any bone I had ever seen before and I’d found whale bones and things like that on the beach before.“So I had a quick look on the internet and thought this looks like it must come from something really big.“In the back of my mind I thought maybe it could be a mammoth or something like that.”He took it to the local museum service who in turn passed it on to