Boy finds dinosaur tooth
A KNYSNA schoolboy has donated a 120 million-year-old dinosaur tooth he found near his grandfather’s house to the Albany Museum in Grahamstown.
Benjamin Ingel, 13, kept the tooth for two years despite most people who saw it claiming it was an old piece of plastic.
“When I found the tooth a lot people thought it was plastic.
“I am very excited about the fact it is a real dinosaur tooth,” he said.
The young teen said he started searching for dinosaur fossils when he was five years old.
“My interest started when I used to go to my friend’s farm where we played a game looking for dinosaur bones.”
The find has excited palaeontologists, who say it is the first dinosaur of fossil found in the Knysna basin.
Albany Museum Devonian fossil expert Dr Rob Gess received the tooth at the Albany Museum, together with the Museum’s dinosaur expert, Dr Billy de Klerk.
He says the full significance of the find would only be determined when the tooth had been properly analysed by specialists and sedimentologists had dated it.
Gess said although they were not certain exactly what kind of carnivorous dinosaur the tooth came from, it was definitely “some big theropod”.
He said the tooth would be properly studied by a group led by Jonah Chonoire of the Evolutionary Studies Institute at Wits University, before being returned to the Albany Museum to be preserved in perpetuity on behalf of the nation.
Benjamin’s proud grandfather, Vernon Rice, said experts were hoping to return to the area soon to see if they could find more fossil remains. He said Ben had found the tooth three years ago, while playing below his garden.
“He has always been a child who is interested in dinosaurs and used to play around with friends pretending to look for them.
“Everybody thought it was a piece of plastic but Ben insisted I keep it safely until we could find out if it was.”
The tooth was stashed safely in a side draw next to Rice’s bed for a year until he showed it to geologists Rob Muir and Roger Schoon, while Rob was working near Rice’s house.
“I invited them to come in and have a cup of coffee and showed them the tooth. They looked startled when they saw it and took photographs.”
According to South African law, all fossils are protected and should be left where they are found until a palaeontologist is called.