A man has shared a photo of an animal tooth his wife found in her backyard when she was a child, wowing social media users with the fossil.
Jannick Ketele, 33, from Belgium shared photos of the artifact his wife, Elly van Peer, found in the yard of her childhood home when she was 6 or 7 years old.
"She helped her grandfather (who was half paralyzed) plant potatoes in the vegetable garden," Ketele told Newsweek, adding, "The tooth came to the surface, Elly took the tooth home and put it away somewhere in her bedroom, in a box or something like that."
"Last year while cleaning out the garage there was a box with the tooth in a backpack. Now it stands in our display cabinet, among other objects that symbolize beautiful memories," he continued.
On Tuesday, Ketele posted photos of the tooth on Reddit, writing in the caption: "Found in the countryside in Belgium, about 150km from the North Sea. The tooth is 5cm long."
The post has received more than 2,000 upvotes, with commenters expressing their awe at the discovery. One user wrote, "What an epic gardening surprise!"
In Belgium, a number of ancient teeth have been found in recent years. In 2022, the discovery of a Neanderthal tooth believed to be about 40,000 years old made headlines. And a study published in August about teeth found in the Belgian city of Antwerp and in Norwich, England, identified them as belonging to an extinct marine carnivore that comes from the same animal family as the modern walrus.
Ketele said he and his wife didn't know much about the tooth and that they hadn't gone to anyone to verify its origin.
However, Redditors theorized that it belonged to a shark, with one writing: "Super cool tooth! My suspicion is, being broad (and suspect flat, if we could see the tooth on edge), an extinct giant Mako. Probably a great white ancestor like Cosmopolitodus Hastalis aka Giant White Shark aka Carcharodon Plicalitis."
Another added: "Here in northern Germany close to where I come from there is a place in the woods, which used to be the shoreline of the North Sea millions of years ago. We found many old shark teeth (smaller ones, but also similar in size as from OP) within half an hour of searching. Although I am definitely not in the kid-age anymore, I felt like one again."
"Belgium is known for these teeth," a user commented. "Worth digging there!"
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