A citizen of England made a surprising discovery of millions of years old fossil while she was walking on a beach in Holland-on-Sea, Essex before encountering a wavy line on gravel.
Speaking to SWNS, 56-year-old Chris Bien said: “I saw it poking out and thought it must be a tooth to have a pattern like that. I started scraping away with my hands but it was so deep in the ground that my hands weren’t good enough.”
The woman from Goring also said that she was with her husband when they dug out the object and realised that it was a fossilised tooth.
This was an amazing discovery as she said to have told her husband earlier that she was going to find a mammoth’s tooth.
“Despite the beaches of North Essex being famous for such treasures,” the mother-of-one was amazed.
“I was in disbelief and very excited — while we were digging it out I was hoping it was a mammoth tooth but I kept saying to my husband: ‘It can’t be.'”
She said she and her husband burst out laughing as they stood on the beach holding that.
According to the New York Post, the tooth may be related to one of the largest mammoth species called the steppe mammoth.
The tooth is six-and-a-half to seven inches in depth and width. It weighs about 4.4 pounds.
The species was on earth 1.8 million years ago and is an ancestor of the wooly mammoth, the report said.
“I want people to know about the deep, rich history behind this find — when you’re an archaeologist, it’s your duty to report your finds,” Bien said.