Many of the animal bones from the cave show a characteristic pattern of gnaw marks indicating that spotted hyaenas used Robin Hood Cave as a den during the Ice Age. Bones, which must have littered the cave floor, indicate a wide range of animals including wolf, bear, lion, horse, giant deer, reindeer and bison as well as smaller mammals like arctic hare and arctic lemming.

Early deposits in the central chamber were building up even before the Last Ice Age. Buried within these layers were remains of hippopotamus and a narrow-nosed rhinoceros, animals which lived at Creswell when the climate was as warm as today. One of the biggest mysteries of the cave is the find of a tooth from a lesser scimitar cat. These animals are known to have become extinct long before the last Ice Age. So how did it come to be in such late deposits? Did Ice Age hunters find the tooth, think it interesting and keep it?

Explore the objects found in Robin Hood Cave