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Hobby seekers find extraordinary 10,000-year-old mammoth tooth on Dutch beach
©April Pethybridge
On a Dutch dune and beach strip, Flemish hobby searchers Nick (32) and Lisa (28) made a sensational find. They stumbled upon an approximately 10,000-year-old mammoth tooth, with tooth root still present and in particularly good condition.
The Flemings made the find on the Maasvlakte beach. That spot is known as a "fossil hotspot". After all, teeth, molars and bones of mammoths and other Ice Age animals regularly surface there as the sea and dredging activities expose old layers of the North Sea bed.
The tooth probably belonged to a wool mammoth from the Late Ice Age. The Flemish pair of enthusiasts found the mammoth tooth this week. Presumably, the mammoth tooth suddenly came loose from North Sea bottom and made its way to the surface through the force of waves and storms.
The tooth root is still entirely attached to the molar, which is not common in such finds on the Dutch coast. Natural historians are elated by the find and are already speaking of a "museum piece-worthy find that can provide insight into the habitats and distribution of mammoths in the ancient North Sea region".
Dutch subsurface harbors rich time capsule from prehistory
Nick and Lisa searched the beach with the metal detector, as they regularly do during their vacations. The tooth suddenly surfaced alongside the remains of modern shells and sea stuff. The tooth has since been turned over to a natural history institute for further research, registration of the find site and possible exhibition.
The woolly mammoth was about the same size as the modern African elephant. Males reached heights of about 3.4 meters and females reached 2.7 meters. The woolly mammoth, as its name suggests, had thick, woolly fur, smaller ears and a curved back with a large fat hump. That body composition then provided good insulation in the cold, northern tundra and steppe environments of Europe, Asia and North America.
©April Pethybridge - illustration image of a mammoth reconstruction