A DINOSAUR mad boy who started digging up his dad’s lawn to find snails was shocked to find a 400 million year old fossil in his back garden.
Siddak Singh Jhamat, six, loves to play in the mud and had raced home from school in Walsall, West Midlands, to start collecting worms and bugs from his parents’ flowerbeds.
But it was not until he used a spade to take a chunk out of his dad’s freshly cut grass that Siddak found what is thought to be a horn coral from around 400 million years ago.
Siddak said: “I can’t believe I really found it just in our garden.
“I was just digging a hole with my spade and I came across these fossils.
“I accidentally went over the grass and that’s where I found it.
“We washed them up and then my dad helped me to research what it was.
“I don’t know what it is but I’m really excited to find out. It’s really interesting.”
Fossil enthusiast Siddak, who lives with his dad Vish Singh, 42, and mum Sangeeta Tutt, 40, used a fossil hunting kit his nan had bought him for Christmas to clean up the find.
Horn coral, named after its cone-like shape, is now extinct and was present in the sea between 488 million and 251 million years ago.
Dad Vish told The Sun: “After school on Monday he had dug up a massive piece of grass and he took it upon himself to cut a chunk out of it.
“He ran inside to where I was cooking dinner and said ‘Daddy I think I’ve found something’.
“I went out and it looked like a claw and I thought it was a goat horn when I looked at it. It looked like a farm animal horn.
“I’m on a lot of fossil finding groups on Facebook so I put it out there and asked for opinions on it.”
Fossil enthusiasts were quick to identify it as a horn coral, and praised six-year-old Siddak for the impressive find.
Vish said: “He’s really chuffed by it. He finds it all really fascinating.
“We don’t understand where this fossil could have possibly come from – we live nowhere near the sea.
“Someone said it might have been in the clay which over time has brought these fossils to the surface.”
Siddak had been to Lyme Regis with his parents last year on a fossil hunting holiday and found an ammonite fossil on the beach – but dad Vish thinks this back garden find is even older.
Vish, who works as a project manager, said: “It’s been really exciting especially given the lockdown.
“He will inevitably now try to dig up the rest of the lawn.”
