Press
A man fulfilled a real childhood dream during a visit to the beach. A museum confirmed that he had found a rare fossil.
Edisto Beach – Kyle Finley from the US state of South Carolina was actually just going for an evening stroll on the beach when he suddenly noticed an unusually shaped stone in the sand. The jagged surface, which resembled the teeth of a huge animal, made the man suspicious. It quickly became clear that he was holding the remains of an animal that became extinct more than ten thousand years ago. Spoiler: It is not the tooth of the extinct giant shark Megalodon, which another hobby collector discovered in early May.
“I was walking along the coast and watching the sunset without really looking for fossils,” Finley told the US news portal Newsweek, which published the rare find on Monday (May 20). “At one point I happened to look down and saw the six spikes sticking out of the sand.”
Hobby collector comes across angular shape on the beach – and can hardly believe his eyes
Finley had already taken trips to the beach with his family as a child. He has been coming back to the place ever since he was little. Over the years, his passion for fossils has developed. Searching is one of his favorite things to do on the beach, says Finley. When he came across the jagged object in the sand by chance, the amateur searcher immediately suspected that it could be a mastodon tooth. He had previously seen the fossil in numerous photos and in museums.
The American Mastodon is, according to information from National Geographic a proboscis animal of the genus mammoth and is considered a distant relative of the elephant. The animal, which could reach a size of up to three meters, roamed the present-day USA for almost five million years before it became extinct 10,000 years ago. Miners found the ancient tusk of a mammoth.
“Definitely a unique find”: Hobby fossil collector finds rare remains of a mastodon on the beach
“I couldn’t believe it and was in complete shock. I never thought I would find a complete tooth, let alone one as beautiful as this,” said Finley. “This is definitely a unique find.” A spokesperson for the Natural History Museum in London also confirmed the find with a picture. It was specifically the molar of an American mastodon (Mammut americanum).
According to several US tourism operators in the region, Edisto Beach is a well-known fossil site and therefore attracts numerous tourists. Mainly the remains found are of land mammals that lived at the end of the last ice age between 11,000 and 50,000 years ago. (nz)
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