The extraordinary fossil find by a seven year old boy from Wareham in Dorset is helping the Natural History Museum shed light on a long extinct predator from the dawn of mammals.
James was at the Lyme Regis Fossil Festival with his mother Fiona when he joined in with a tabletop excavation organised by the museum and unearthed something which nobody expected.
The Natural History Museum helped visitors identify the fossils they found in their soil samples
Shallow prehistoric sea and tropical forest
A fossilised molar tooth found in sand from South London turned out to be from a weasel like animal known as Prototomus, a meat eater from 55 million years ago.
At the annual festival in June 2024, scientists from the Natural History Museum were giving visitors the chance to sift through sand from the Eocene era, in the hunt for tiny fossils.
The sandy soil, which came from Abbey Wood in South West London, would once have been at the bottom of a shallow prehistoric sea with tropical forests along its shores.
Although the most common fossils to come out of the site are prehistoric shark teeth and tiny snails, when James sifted through the sand he found something that the museum staff couldn’t identify straight away.
This artist’s impression of a weasel ancestor from the Eocene era would have been similar to the Prototomus
“This was something special”
Neil Adams, curator of fossil mammals at the Natural History Museum, said:
“Every year, we bring tonnes of fossil rich sand and soil to Lyme Regis which is about 55 million years old and really rich in fossils.
“We give a cup of it to children at the festival, who pour it into a small sieve and shake the sand through to see what goodies they can pick out – the fossils include sharks’ teeth, snail shells and occasionally something a lot rarer.
“On this occasion James found a fossilised mammal tooth belonging to a prototomus from the Eocene era, after the dinosaurs went extinct and when mammals began to burst onto the scene.
“My colleagues quickly realised that this was something special, and that it was fossilised remains of a mammal of some sort, but weren’t sure exactly what it was so they sent me some pictures and said they had found something rare.”
The tooth discovered by James has been donated to the Natural History Museum for research
“One of the most pristine in the UK”
Neil Adams added:
“I was able to identify it for them so they were able to get word back to James and his mum Fiona and let them know what it was.
“We had hundreds of people come to the fossil festival to take part in this activity and most will find fossilised shark teeth if they are lucky. This find was a special find, one in thousands.
“In the museum collection we only have two or three complete teeth from prototomus and the one that James found is one of the most pristine teeth in the UK, so it is a really important find and will allow us to understand a lot more about this animal.
“James was kind enough to donate it to the collection so that anyone can come to the museum to see it and study it.”
Thousands of people attended the Lyme Regus Fossil Festival in June 2024
“It was weird to find the mammal tooth”
James told the museum:
“Looking for fossils is a really fun thing to do, and I enjoyed knowing that if I found something I liked I got to take it home.
“My favourite things were the animal teeth. I found lots of shark teeth and the mammal tooth. It was weird to come across the mammal tooth because it had so many points on it and I didn’t know what it was.”
Even though the find was just a single tooth, studying the dental microwear on it could reveal more about the last days and weeks of the animal’s life, and what it was eating.
Prototomus belonged to a group of animals known as the hyaenodonts and would have been about the size of a weasel, and probably had quite a similar lifestyle as it likely hunted rodents, birds and insects.
This was quite small compared to other hyaenodonts, with later relatives like Hyaenodon growing to about as big as a wolf. But by studying Prototomus, researchers hope to get a better idea of how this size transition occurred.
Later relatives of Prototomus, such as the above Hyaenodon, evolved to become the size of a modern day wolf
Would have munched on insects
Neil Adams said:
“These fossils are pretty rare, and there’s only a handful of Prototomus remains in our collections. It was a superb find, as we don’t know a lot about this animal.
“Full checks are pending, but I reckon it is a nice first or second lower molar of the early hyaenodontid Prototomus, which would have munched on insects and small vertebrates 55 million years ago!
“Teeth are a mammal palaeontologist’s best friend, and there’s a lot they can tell us. Studying this tooth might give us a better understanding of the relationships between different hyaenodont species, and provide insights into the evolution of the group.
“Not a lot of dental microwear research has been done on early Eocene mammals, especially the carnivores, so I think there’s a lot of interesting work to come.”
The Etches Collection from Kimmeridge received a lot of attention at the fossil festival
Jurassic Rocks theme for Swanage Carnival
The annual Lyme Regis Fossil Festival featured an exclusive screening of the film Pliosaurus – The Discovery of a Monster, followed by a question and answer session featuring Steve Etches of The Etches Collection in Kimmeridge.
He and fossil collector Chris Moore talked about working together on the preservation of Philip Jacob’s extraordinary pliosaur find near Kimmeridge Bay, which featured in the BBC TV programme, Attenborough and the Giant Sea Monster.
The pliosaur discovery also inspired the Jurassic Rocks theme of the Swanage Carnival which runs until Saturday 3rd August 2024.
Further information
- Explore the Natural History Museum online
- See the best of Lyme Regis Fossil Festival here
- Join in with Jurassic Rocks hijinks during Swanage Carnival
