Mother Son Duo Find Mammoth Teeth on the Beach

A long walk on the beach doesn’t normally end with a Mammoth tooth in tow. But, for Chester and his mother Esmeralda, this is the goal of every beachcombing visit to the frigid North Sea. And the pair is helping redefine what it means to visit the beach. 

Their hunt for Ice Age beasts began in the summer of 2018, when Esmeralda first found a piece of a Mammoth tusk while walking on a local Dutch beach.

Chester and his Mother on the beach combing for fossils.

Chester was only 3 years old at the time, but as soon as he could walk the long distances to uncover these incredible fossils, he was hooked. Now, you can find the mother- son duo making their way down the Dutch coastline as often as three times a week in search of fossils from the Ice Age.

An assortment of Ice Age Teeth and Bone found on the Dutch coastline.

Their favorite hunting ground is an artificial beach created by humans using sand dredged from the North Sea.

The North Sea as we know it has only existed for 12,000 years. Before that, this 575,000 km² body of water was a steppe habitat known as Doggerland that connected the Netherlands to England. It may be hard to believe, but where cold salt laden waves make their way to crash against Dutch beaches, Mammoths once roamed in high numbers, along with Woolly Rhinos, Irish Elks, and Cave Bears. 

To Chester, their most incredible finds still belong to the Woolly Mammoth, with the large adult tooth and a baby Mammoth tooth they discovered being his absolute favorites.

Recovered!

Chewing surface of the Mammoth ‘Milk’ Tooth

It is hard to imagine that mammoths were commonplace here and that a sea over 970 kilometres (600 mi) long and 580 kilometres (360 mi) wide was once a thriving habitat full of large Megafauna animals. But on every walk this duo revives a little piece of that history.

Both Mother and Son have a long list of fossils they hope to find, but they stress that every day fellow fossil hunters continue to make incredible finds. And we have no doubt that Chester and his mother will be among them.