| Site of Special Scientific Interest | |
 | |
| Area of Search | Cambridgeshire |
|---|---|
| Grid reference | TL 383 491 [1] |
| Interest | Geological |
| Area | 3.8 hectares [1] |
| Notification | 1989 [1] |
| Location map | Magic Map |
Barrington Pit is a 3.8 hectare geological Site of Special Scientific Interest near Barrington in Cambridgeshire. [1] [2] It is a Geological Conservation Review site. [3]
A Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) in Great Britain or an Area of Special Scientific Interest (ASSI) in the Isle of Man and Northern Ireland is a conservation designation denoting a protected area in the United Kingdom and Isle of Man. SSSI/ASSIs are the basic building block of site-based nature conservation legislation and most other legal nature/geological conservation designations in the United Kingdom are based upon them, including national nature reserves, Ramsar sites, Special Protection Areas, and Special Areas of Conservation. The acronym "SSSI" is often pronounced "triple-S I".
Barrington is a village and civil parish in the South Cambridgeshire district of Cambridgeshire, England. The village is about 7 miles (11 km) south-west of Cambridge, between Haslingfield and Shepreth.
Cambridgeshire is a county in the East of England, bordering Lincolnshire to the north, Norfolk to the north-east, Suffolk to the east, Essex and Hertfordshire to the south, and Bedfordshire and Northamptonshire to the west. The city of Cambridge is the county town. Modern Cambridgeshire was formed in 1974 as an amalgamation of the counties of Cambridgeshire and Isle of Ely and Huntingdon and Peterborough, the former covering the historic county of Cambridgeshire and the latter covering the historic county of Huntingdonshire and the Soke of Peterborough, historically part of Northamptonshire. It contains most of the region known as Silicon Fen.
This site is described by Natural England as of national importance for its mammal fossils, most of which were found around 1900. Species include hippopotamuses, straight-tusked elephants, lions, aurochs and spotted hyenas. They probably date to the warm Eemian period, around 130,000 to 115,000 years ago. [4]
Natural England is a non-departmental public body in the United Kingdom sponsored by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. It is responsible for ensuring that England's natural environment, including its land, flora and fauna, freshwater and marine environments, geology and soils, are protected and improved. It also has a responsibility to help people enjoy, understand and access the natural environment.
The common hippopotamus, or hippo, is a large, mostly herbivorous, semiaquatic mammal native to sub-Saharan Africa. It is one of only two extant species in the family Hippopotamidae, the other being the pygmy hippopotamus. The name comes from the ancient Greek for "river horse" (ἱπποπόταμος). After the elephant and rhinoceros, the common hippopotamus is the third-largest type of land mammal and the heaviest extant artiodactyl. Despite their physical resemblance to pigs and other terrestrial even-toed ungulates, the closest living relatives of the Hippopotamidae are cetaceans from which they diverged about 55 million years ago.
The straight-tusked elephant is an extinct species of elephant that inhabited Europe and Western Asia during the Middle and Late Pleistocene.
The site is private land, part of which is now covered by housing.
