11-year-old boy finds 1.8 million year-old elephant tooth on beach

By Dominic Bareham

A schoolboy made a once-in-a-lifetime discovery when he found an ancient elephant tooth on the beach.

Charlie Orchard-Lisle, 11, was walking along East Lane beach at Bawdsey in Suffolk, when he spotted the rock-like object on the shoreline.

The find, which is about four inches in width, was confirmed as the upper left molar of an Anancus arvernensis.

The mammal, which walked the Earth 1.8 million years ago, is an extinct relative of the African bush elephant which reaches the shoulder height of more than 8 ft.

Charlie's mom Eleanor, who was with him on the day of the find (May 24), said: "Basically, we were walking along and ten minutes before my son Charlie was saying how much he loves elephants.

"We were walking along and could see this thing by the lapping waves so it must have been quite distinctive because it caught both our eyes, so we picked it up and my husband came over.

"We could tell it was something different. It had a different feel to it.

"It is quite incredible and I can't believe you can find something so old that existed 1.8 million years ago and then just rocks up on the beach."

She believed the tooth may have been buried in the red crag cliff at Bawdsey and been flushed out by erosion.

An image of the tooth was shared with Professor Adrian Lister, a research leader in paleontology at the Natural History Museum in London who confirmed its origin.