Nine-year-old finds 700,000 year old bear tooth on beach
- Published
Experts are blown away by nine-year-old Etta's discovery - an ancient fossilised bear's tooth.
No day on the beach is complete without a bit of treasure hunting in the sand, but nine-year-old Etta surprised history experts when she found a fossilised bear tooth that's over 700,000 years old!
"I was looking down and there it was," she said.
"I thought it was a fossilised bit of wood so I put it in my pocket, and when we got back to the car park we showed it to a fossil expert and she fell off her chair.
"She said, 'People search for 20 years and don't find anything this good' and told us it was a bear tooth."
The 700,000-year-old West Runton mammoth - an ancestor of the woolly mammoth - was discovered in 1990
West Runton beach in Norfolk is well known by historians after a particularly famous find, the skeleton of an Ice Age mammoth, was uncovered there in 1990. It's the oldest and largest mammoth fossil ever discovered in the UK
Since then more fossils have been unearthed as the coast's cliffs are slowly eroded away.
Erosion is when weather and waves gradually damage the cliffs along a coastline and cause them to crumble away.
Etta initially thought the tooth was a piece of ancient wood, but it has since been confirmed as a bear's tooth
Etta has loaned the tooth, which at 9cm from tip to root is about the same length as a pencil, to a local geologist and natural history expert, David Waterhouse.
"To find a perfect massive bear canine is a first for me in 16 years working here," he said.
This is what Norfolk could have looked like 700,000 years ago, with hyenas, lions, deer and mammoths
He said he welcomes "responsible" fossil-hunters like Etta who do not dig into cliffs, and who report and record what they find.
Etta and her sisters Juno (left) and Cleo (right) have set up a fossil museum in a shed in their garden
Etta says she plans to keep on fossil hunting. Next on her wishlist? - "a giant beaver - a tooth of a giant beaver, that would be good".
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