Boy, 11, finds 1.8 million-year-old elephant tooth on England beach
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An 11-year-old boy in England recently made an unusual beach day discovery: an ancient ivory tusk from a species that lived about 1.8 million years ago.
Charlie Orchard-Lisle found the tooth in May at East Lane beach in Bawdsey, a seaside village near Ipswich, Suffolk, the SWNS news agency reported.
The specimen found near the shoreline was later identified as an upper left molar approximately 4 inches wide.
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It once belonged to Anancus arvernensis, an extinct relative of modern elephants, including the modern-day African bush elephant.
Charlie Orchard-Lisle uncovered the tusk of a fossilized elephant relative while walking along East Lane beach in Bawdsey with his family. (News search / SWNS)
Photos of the strange, rock-like object show that tooth enamel has been preserved and mineralized over millions of years.
The timing of the discovery was particularly notable, according to Charlie’s mother, Eleanor Orchard-Lisle.
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“We were actually walking and 10 minutes ago my son Charlie was saying how much he loved elephants,” Eleanor said, according to SWNS.
“It had a different vibe.”
“We were walking and we could see this thing through the waves. So it must have been quite different because it caught both of our eyes. So we picked it up and my husband came over.”
The family immediately realized the object “was something different,” the mother said.
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“It had a different vibe,” he said.
The fossilized tooth, approximately 4 inches wide, was found near the shoreline during a family beach trip. “It’s pretty incredible,” said Eleanor Orchard-Lisle. (News search / SWNS)
The family is unsure where the tooth came from, but Eleanor Orchard-Lisle suggested it was buried within the Red Crag cliff, a fossil-rich geological formation found on parts of England’s east coast.
The tooth may then have been washed away by erosion before appearing on the beach.
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“It’s pretty incredible and I can’t believe you could find something this old that existed 1.8 million years ago and then washed up on the beach,” Eleanor Orchard-Lisle said, according to the SWNS report.
Suffolk student joins a growing list of children coming across remarkable ancient finds.
Experts identified the specimen as the upper left molar from Anancus arvernensis, an extinct relative of modern elephants. (Universal Images Group via Arterra/Marica van der Meer/Getty Images)
In late April, a group of first-graders in Norway discovered a rare Viking-era sword while exploring a field.
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Around the same time, an 8-year-old boy in Israel discovered a fragment of a 1,700-year-old Roman statuette while visiting the Ramon Crater in the Negev Desert.
