'It could be millions of years old': Ten-year-old discovers potential sea urchin fossil while digging with kitchen spoon
A dinosaur enthusiast was left amazed after digging up prehistoric remains
A budding young palaeontologist has made a rock-solid discovery after digging up a fossil with a kitchen spoon.
Ten-year-old, Soleil Hasenberg was digging outside the front of her Havant home earlier this month when she unearthed a fossil that potentially dates back millions of years.
The youngster, who has a passion for dinosaurs, was over the moon at her discovery and raced indoors to show her mum, Rachel.
The mum-of-three said: “I thought it was really cool. It’s not something you see outside the house normally. We’ve identified it as a sea urchin and it could be millions of years old.
“She was just outside digging by the garages. She was out there digging with the kitchen spoons and then she ran into the house with it - It’s amazing.
“We’re going to keep it, polish it up and give it a really good clean. Soleil has always loved dinosaurs ever since she was very, very young and she used to have lots of dinosaur toys, and she knew the names of dinosaurs when she was two-years-old.”
To verify the discovery, The News contacted the University of Portsmouth, with Dr Jeremy Lockwood saying: “It looks likely to be a fossil echinoid or sea urchin. It’s quite damaged, sea urchins have five planes of symmetry or a five armed star pattern on them but this only preserved two.
“It looks to be in flint so hard to date accurately but perhaps between 100 and 80 million years old, so around when the dinosaurs lived but at a time when the south of England was under the sea.”