Woman finds set of fossilised woolly mammoth teeth in late husband's garden shed

Kathie Read made an unusual find among the flower pots and cobwebs as she cleaned out her garden shed – a box of fossilised mammoth teeth. Mrs Read, from Broome, near Bungay, Norfolk, was tidying up when she came across a wooden box belonging to her late husband, John. Mrs Read, from Broome, near Bungay, was tidying up when she came across a wooden box belonging to her late husband, John.

Inside she found what she thought were bones, but on closer inspection they appeared to be huge teeth. Mr Read, who died in 2008, aged 82, had never spoken in detail to his wife about the find, only once making a vague passing reference to it. The newspaper the teeth were wrapped in was dated November 16, 1950, eight years before the couple married.



Keen to get to the root of the puzzle, Mrs Read contacted his friend, Vic Cossey, who came and had a look. Mr Cossey took the teeth to David Waterhouse, curator of natural history at Norfolk Museums and Archaeology Service, who examined them and said they were molars from the lower jaw of an adult woolly mammoth.

It is thought Mr Read found
the teeth when gravel was being extracted to construct local airfields at Flixton and Seething during the war years. Mrs Read, 75, said the family was delighted to learn more about the find. “I don’t expect he knew what they were,” she said. “He liked books, but he wasn’t a reader as such. If he found anything he would bring it home. He was a collector of anything. John would have been really pleased. It is just a shame he is not here to know.”