Highways England experts, working alongside archaeologists from MOLA Headland Infrastructure, have discovered the partial remains of a woolly mammoth and woolly rhino, both at least 100,000 years old, during excavations for construction materials near Fenstanton in what was once an ancient river.

They are the latest in a series of fantastic finds from the team building the new road, due to open in December 2020, with other remarkable discoveries including Prehistoric henges, Iron Age settlements, Roman pottery kilns, three Anglo-Saxon villages, and a deserted medieval village.

Highways England Cultural Heritage Team Leader for the A14, Dr Steve Sherlock said:

These discoveries are just the latest in a line of amazing finds that the team has unearthed since this work begun at the end of 2016. All of these finds are testament to the rich history of the region, and in particular this local area around the A14 in Cambridgeshire.

It’s crucial that we record this evidence for the past so that it can be seen and understood by future generations. Seeing the remains of these extinct animals really brings to life what was happening over a hundred thousand years ago.

We’ve been working hard in partnership with Cambridgeshire County Council and our archaeological team to unearth the historical secrets of this area and understand some of the incredible things that have happened in the county. Although our excavations as part of this work will soon be finished, Highways England will continue to respect our country’s environmental and cultural heritage across all of our improvement schemes, and we’ll be ensuring that the finds from our work on the A14 are well preserved and accessible to residents.

Dr Bill Boismier, consultant Palaeolithic archaeologist for MOLA Headland, said:

The bones together with other environmental evidence surviving from the Ice Age such as plant remains, insects, and microscopic pollen grains from plants should help us to create a picture of the floodplain environment at the time when these remains were deposited.

Kasia Gdaniec, Senior Archaeologist at Cambridgeshire County Council, said:

Quarries afford unique opportunities to understand deep time periods of land formation and transformation and enable us to understand how humans and animals adapted to the changing climatic and environmental conditions. Gravel quarries, such as the one at Fenstanton, provide valuable evidence of ice ages and warm periods, or interstadials, and require specialist investigation to interpret the evolution of the landscapes represented by the mineral and sedimentary series within them

This is hugely important to our understanding of some of the most distant times in the human past and Cambridgeshire County Council extend their gratitude to the A14Team and Highways England for continuing their support of the nationally significant archaeology programme.

Both the woolly mammoth and woolly rhino were alive during the last Ice Age, the Pleistocene Epoch, which began about 2.6 million years ago and ended around 9,700 BC. This period was a time where the climate oscillated between cold glacial conditions with vast glaciers and warm temperate interglacial environments with animals such as hippopotamus foraging along the banks of the River Thames.

Mammoths and woolly rhinos adapted to life on the cold grasslands lying south of the glaciers. They were covered by thick fur and layers of body fat to protect them from the bitter cold of the glacial winter. Both animals fed mainly on low lying grasses and other herbs.

The woolly mammoth is closely related to today’s Asian Elephant, though has a thick coat of brown fur in addition to its distinctive curved tusks. The herbivores were roughly the size of modern African Elephants, with the larger males measuring around four metres tall and weighing in at up to six tonnes. Initially surviving the end of the Ice Age, the last of them are believed to have lived on in the Arctic until around 1,560 BC – around a thousand years after the Pyramids of Giza were built.

The woolly rhino grew to around four metres long and weighed-in at just under a tonne with a height of around two metres at the shoulders, and had two distinctive horns on its head. They went extinct in Britain around 15,000 years ago, and have no living relatives.

The latest discoveries will now be treated by conservators in London and then studied by Ice Age specialists.

As the £1.5bn A14 Cambridge to Huntingdon project will mark the second year since construction started in a month, the team is continuing to excel, with latest proposals to open the upgraded 21-mile stretch of road as a motorway when work finishes in December 2020.

For the latest information about the A14 Cambridge to Huntingdon improvement scheme, including job and training opportunities, visit our scheme website follow @A14C2H on Twitter and like our Facebook page.

General enquiries

Members of the public should contact the Highways England customer contact centre on 0300 123 5000.

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Journalists should contact the Highways England press office on 0844 693 1448 and use the menu to speak to the most appropriate press officer.

Mr Brian Olley has been appointed Her Majesty’s Ambassador to the Republic of Lithuania in succession to Ms Claire Lawrence who will be transferring to another Diplomatic Service appointment. Mr Olley will take up his appointment in August 2019.

CURRICULUM VITAE

Full name: John Brian Olley

Married to: Pascale Olley

Children: Three

Further information

• Follow the Foreign Office on Twitter @foreignoffice and Facebook

• Follow the Foreign Office on Instagram, YouTube and LinkedIn

On 24 October 2018, RAIB published an updated report on the overturning of a tram at Sandilands junction, Croydon on 9 November 2016. The update includes an addendum describing a Transport for London (TfL) audit of the Tram Operations Ltd’s (TOL) fatigue risk management system and associated actions by TOL. The audit was undertaken in June 2017 but the audit report was not provided to RAIB until after publication of its investigation report in December 2017. The RAIB report update also includes minor technical corrections and adding a letter, sent to all UK tram operators in July 2017, giving advance notice of some issues likely to be covered by the recommendations published in December 2017.

The updated report can be found in place of the original version published in December 2017.

• Guidance developed alongside media representatives published
• Move designed to protect and maintain principle of open justice
• Lucy Frazer MP to chair media roundtable next month

The guidance, developed by a working group involving media representatives, is part of a wider effort to build stronger working relationships between courts and the press and maintain the principle of open justice as we increasingly digitise court services.

Guidance has been split into an overall summary and more detailed jurisdictional advice, so staff can find exactly what they are looking for in a more timely and straightforward manner, making it easier for journalists to cover court proceedings and access listings.

The HMCTS staff guidance has also, for the first time, been made public and will be reviewed and updated on a regular basis.

Susan Acland-Hood, HMCTS CEO, said:

Open justice is a fundamental part of our court system and impartial media reporting of the work of our courts and tribunals is an important way of maintaining public confidence.

This reshaped guidance, which we are publishing for the first time, is designed to give our staff easily accessible information so they can support all those reporting on proceedings in courts across the country. I’m incredibly grateful to everyone who helped put it together.

We will continue to work closely with stakeholders to promote good working relationships between HMCTS and regional media. Their insight and expertise will ensure our ongoing programme of reform not only maintains but, wherever possible, enhances open justice.

Santha Rasaiah, News Media Association:

Open Justice is vital to the rule of law and is achieved, in practice, by press reporting of courts and tribunals to the wider public. That depends not just on the legal framework, but the day to day practicalities of journalistic access and reporting.

The NMA therefore warmly welcomed both the opportunity to work with HMCTS on this new guidance and its wider publication. A ready reference, providing common guidance, will assist court, press and public alike. We hope that it will promote further constructive co-operation, court reporting and public understanding of the work of our justice system.

Ian Murray, Executive Director of the Society of Editors commented:

This is an important initiative and the Society is delighted to have been able to assist in helping to reinforce these guidelines to court staff and journalists.

If the public is to have faith in the justice system it must see it in action and that means ensuring journalists have access to courts and the necessary information to do their jobs. At the same time court staff need to have simple guidelines as to what is permissible.

There is more to do but the work carried out so far is extremely important.

The existing working group is now being reshaped to consider how the reform programme can support and enhance media access while playing a pivotal role in maintaining and developing open justice.

This includes a roundtable discussion to be chaired by Courts Minister Lucy Frazer next month, which will bring together a range of representatives from newspapers, broadcasters and online media platforms to discuss ways of enhancing court access.

Notes to editors

The HMCTS working group was made up of the following:

• Ed Owen (Chair) – Director of Communications, HMCTS
• Kate Briden – Director of the Royal Courts of Justice Group, HMCTS
• Laura King – Operational Contracted Services Manager, HMCTS
• Alice Booth – Ministry of Justice Senior Press Officer, Courts desk
• Stephen Ward – Head of News and External Communications, Judicial Office
• Mike Dodd – Press Association
• Ian Murray – Society of Editors
• Santha Rasaiah – News Media Association
• Tristan Kirk – London Evening Standard
• John Battle – ITN

The Veterinary Antimicrobial Resistance Sales and Surveillance (VARSS) report shows that sales of antibiotics for use in food-producing animals dropped by 18% between 2016 and 2017 to reach a low of 37 mg/kg. Sales have also dropped by 40% between 2013 and 2017.

For the first time, the annual report presents data on the use of antibiotics in beef, trout and salmon in addition to usage in the poultry, pig, dairy, gamebird and egg-laying hen industries.

Antimicrobial Resistance occurs when the micro-organisms that cause infection survive exposure to a medicine that would normally kill them or stop their growth. It poses a major threat to modern medicine and is estimated to cost £66 trillion in lost productivity to the global economy.

In 2013 the UK government launched a strategy to reduce the development and spread of antibiotic resistance in animals and humans. As part of this it provided advice to the food-producing animal industry and veterinary professions, encouraging more responsible use of antibiotics to protect medicines for the future.

Lord Gardiner, Minister for Rural Affairs and Biosecurity, said:

These results show an encouraging reduction of antibiotic use in beef, pigs, poultry and other food-producing animals. I hope that the results will set a further example for our food and farming sectors to tackle the threat of antimicrobial resistance. As we know, good farm management, biosecurity and animal husbandry systems are crucial to achieving this.

The UK’s Chief Veterinary Officer, Christine Middlemiss, said:

A 40% drop in sales of antibiotics for use in food-producing animals between 2013 and 2017 is an excellent achievement. This is the result of year-on-year improvement in training, stewardship, stockmanship and disease control.

I praise the industry for their commitment to successfully deliver responsible use of antibiotics and reductions. We must continue to champion infection prevention and disease control to ensure high animal health standards and the optimised use of antimicrobials.

Further information:

• The UK Veterinary Antibiotic Resistance and Sales Surveillance (VARSS) report is published annually by Defra’s Veterinary Medicines Directorate. The report provides the previous years’ data on the quantity of authorised antibiotics for use in animals sold throughout the UK, and results from surveillance programmes looking at antibiotic resistance in animals.
• For the first time, antibiotic usage data from the beef cattle, salmon and trout industries are included in the report.
• For the first time the report presents harmonised outcome indicators on antibiotic resistance, as recommended by the European Centre for Disease Control and Prevention, European Food Safety Authority and European Medicines Agency.
• The rates of resistance in healthy pigs at slaughter have remained relatively stable between 2015 and 2017 for most antibiotics tested; however, a decline has started to be observed in E. coli coinciding with a reduction in antibiotic use in pigs.
• As well as the overall reduction, the report shows a further drop in sales of the highest priority antibiotics that are critically important for human health. This includes a 94% reduction, compared to 2016, in the use of colistin, an antibiotic of last resort for use in people. Colistin use is now at 0.001 mg/kg, putting it considerably below the European Medicines Agency’s target of using less than 1 mg/kg.