An excellent candidate for a young elliptical , or ‘ protoelliptical ’ galaxy is NGC 1700 .
Here we present new B , V and I band imaging using the Keck telescope and reanalyse existing V and I band images from the Hubble Space Telescope .
After subtracting a model of the galaxy from the Keck images NGC 1700 reveals two symmetric tidal tail-like structures .
If this interpretation is correct , it suggests a past merger event involving two spiral galaxies .
These tails are largely responsible for the ‘ boxiness ’ of the galaxy isophotes observed at a radius of \sim 13 kpc .

We also show that the B - I colour distribution of the globular cluster system is bimodal .
The mean colour of the blue population is consistent with those of old Galactic globular clusters .
Relative to this old , metal poor population , we find that the red population is younger and more metal rich .
This young population has a similar age and metallicity as that inferred for the central stars , suggesting that they are both associated with an episode of star formation triggered by the merger that may have formed the galaxy .
Although possessing large errors , we find that the majority of the age estimates of NGC 1700 are reasonably consistent and we adopt a ‘ best estimate ’ for the age of 3.0 \pm 1.0 Gyr .
This relatively young age places NGC 1700 within the age range where there is a notable lack of obvious candidates for protoellipticals .
The total globular cluster specific frequency is rather low for a typical elliptical , even after taking into account fading of the galaxy over the next 10 Gyr .
We speculate that NGC 1700 will eventually form a relatively ‘ globular cluster poor ’ elliptical galaxy .