An 11-year-old boy in England recently made an unusual beach day discovery: an ancient elephant tooth from a species that lived about 1.8 million years ago. Charlie Orchard-Lisle found the tooth at East Lane beach in Bawdsey, a coastal village near Ipswich, Suffolk, in May.
The specimen was later identified as an upper left molar measuring about 4 inches wide. It once belonged to Anancus arvernensis, an extinct relative of modern elephants, including today’s African bush elephant.
According to Charlie’s mother, Eleanor Orchard-Lisle, the timing of the discovery was particularly striking. “Basically, we were walking along, and 10 minutes before, my son Charlie was saying how much he loves elephants,” said Eleanor.
The family isn’t sure where the tooth came from, but Eleanor Orchard-Lisle suggested that it had been buried within a Red Crag cliff, a fossil-rich geological formation found along parts of England’s eastern coast.
Original reporting: Fox News (HLL/CB) — read the source article.
