She thought she had stumbled upon a piece of fascinating flotsam to use in a sculpture.

But when artist Belinda Opie had a chance meeting in her local with a fossil expert, she found out there was more to this humble-looking bit of beach debris than met the eye. For it is actually a 500,000-year-old mammoth tooth.

And its sudden reappearance near the cliffs at Happisburgh after half a million years has raised fears that creeping coastal erosion is washing many of the UK’s pre-historic fossils into the sea. (more…)