Cliffs at Brighton Marina hide remains from Ice Age

These cliffs at Brighton Marina are a piece of Ice Age geology

If you had to name sites in Sussex where you could see Ice Age archaeology, Brighton Marina would hardly spring to mind.

But right by the entrance to the complex, lying by a superstore car-park, lies a stretch of cliff which have traces from the Palaeolithic era, which are over 200,000 years old.

Matt Pope, who is a researcher and archaeologist at University College London, says they are distinctive to the rest of the coastline.

"Anyone looking at these cliffs would think they are part of the chalk cliffs of Sussex," he told the BBC.

"But if you look at them carefully, you'll see these cliffs aren't nice and clean.

Matt Pope has been working on archaeological digs in Sussex for 16 years

"They're a horrible, muddy, reddish colour. They're actually made out of mud which slid into a valley 200,000 years ago."

The cliffs are covering a beach which is more than 200,000 years old and now lies around 15 metres above current sea level.

"From the beach, we've picked up the tools of ancient Neanderthals and the bones of the animals they were hunting," Matt continued.

"There's a 200 to 300 yard stretch of ice age sediment, which contains bones of mammoth, woolly rhinoceros, bison and whale."

A 'complete secret'

You can not currently walk up to the bottom of the cliffs as work is being carried out building a pipeline along the coast.

But Matt is hoping to write interpretation boards to show everyone what an incredible resource there is in the centre of Brighton.

"It's a complete secret. In terms of Northern Europe, it's one of the most accessible big sections of Ice Age geology, and yet hardly anyone knows it's here," he said.

"In this part of Sussex you cannot find anything older than that. Here it's very accessible.

"It's right in the centre of Brighton and you'll be able to walk up to archaeology that's a quarter of a million years old.

"How often is it you get to see, close-up, the landscapes that extinct species like Neanderthals were walking on?"

Climate change

The different layers of sediment are easily distinguisable

Matt, who has lived in Sussex all his life, started working at Boxgrove in 1995 where the earliest human remains were found.

He has gone on to work on similar digs at Valdoe and Beedings in West Sussex, and is now digging in Jersey.

He says the Marina cliffs offer a cross-section look at how the climate in Sussex has changed since the Ice Age.

"This is a cake-like record.

"There's lot's of slices through deep time in a 20-metre section.

"It's a really good example of how much our geography, environment and the climate has changed over the past quarter or a million years."

So next time you go down to the Marina to do your shopping, make sure to have a look at the cliffs and think about the people who roamed Sussex in the Ice Age.