Archaeologists have found evidence that the Anglo-Saxons hunted and wiped out dolphins in the Humber estuary.
Excavations at a site at Flixborough have uncovered 350 fragments of bone and teeth from bottle-nosed dolphins.
Keith Dobney, a Wellcome Trust research fellow at Durham University, said analysis of the remains suggested that the animals had been targeted from at least the mid-8th century AD. They would probably have wound up on the dining tables of the rich.