PROOF that Ice Age horses roamed the Frome Valley has been found by a Lockleaze naturalist.

After teaching himself basic geology Steve England came across his first fossil from a mammal while knee deep in the River Frome.

Now scientists in London have praised Mr England's contribution to science and confirmed it is the tooth of a young male horse which became extinct during the Ice Age.

Mr England, 45, a father-of-three, became obsessed with Stoke Park and the Frome Valley and wanted to learn more about the area's history. When he could find nothing documented in history books he decided to do some research himself.

Over the last 18 months he has combed thousands of tonnes of rocks for fossils and uses his findings to educate local people and children.

He has discovered fossils which show a tsunami tore through the valley, that Stoke Park was under the sea and that the area was a shallow tropical ocean. But until now he had not found any mammal remains.

He said: "I was by the River Frome and the water levels were very low so I thought I would jump in and see what I could find. I was knee deep when I found the tooth and I knew it was something special straight away.

"It looked like an elephant's tooth. At first I thought it might be from a young mammoth but then I was told it was a young adult species of horse which is now extinct. It lived here between 150 to 600,000 years ago."

After a story in the Evening Post Dr Howard Falcon-Lang, a paleontologist at Royal Holloway, at the University of London, contacted Mr England and travelled to see his collection of fossils.

He then referred him to his colleague Professor Danielle Schreve who confirmed the latest fossil was a horse tooth.

Mr England said: "Dr Howard came and saw my fossils and was really surprised with how many there were. He wrote a letter praising my contribution to science and said that scientists relied on amateurs like me to make these discoveries. Then I found the tooth and asked Professor Schreve to identify it."

In an e-mail to Mr England Professor Schreve wrote: "The tooth is an upper molar of an adult horse.

"It looks pretty robust, very similar to the large-bodied Pleistocene (Ice Age) horses that we know from Britain.

"Horses of this kind are known in Britain from c.650,000 years onwards.

"They are characteristic of open conditions, generally denoting the past presence of grasslands when they are found as fossils, and they appear in both warm and colder periods, whenever habitats were suitable."

Professor Schreve added that the species disappeared 150,000 years ago but returned in the middle part of the last cold stage, 60-25,000-years ago, and that fossil records show them becoming extinct in Britain at the end of the Ice Age.

Mr England hopes to see the tooth placed in a museum in Bristol but believes more should be done to chart and preserve the history of the area. He hopes more hunting will uncover remains of a rare dragonfly thought to be 3ft wide.

He would like to see an information centre set up so people and schools would have a chance to learn more.