8,000 frog bones. One ditch. The culprit? OWLS. 🦉
📅 11 November 2026
Ten years ago, archaeologists digging the A14 near Cambridge found more than 8,000 frog bones — at least 350 frogs and toads — packed into a single ditch at Bar Hill. Nobody could explain it.
Now a study in Environmental Archaeology, from Bournemouth University and the Museum of London Archaeology, has cracked it: the frogs were eaten by short-eared owls and hen harriers, most of them young, in the winter of their first year.
Radiocarbon dating puts the feast about 1,700 years ago, in the Roman period — when retreating Fen waters made the valley a perfect frog-breeding ground, and the owls moved in.
What ancient mystery would YOU want solved next? 👇