By Tim Binnall
An eighth-grade student hiking in Colorado stumbled upon a rather remarkable relic from the distant past: a Tyrannosaurus Rex tooth. According to a local media report, the wondrous find occurred when Jonathan Charpentier spotted something shiny on the ground while exploring the wilderness around his home. Initially uncertain as to what the oddity was, the youngster smartly decided to pocket the odd object because it seemed somewhat out of the ordinary.
"I had no clue that it would be a dinosaur tooth," he recalled, but "when I got home and washed it off, then I knew it was not a rock, but something else." Conceding that even he was skeptical that "it could be something that interesting," Charpentier felt compelled to contact the Denver Museum of Nature and Science in the event that he had found something worthy of their attention. And, as it turns out, that proved to be the case as the facility's dinosaur curator Joe Sertich confirmed that the boy had found a T. Rex tooth.
To his credit, Charpentier submitted the tooth to the museum where it was subsequently put on display with a permanent marker crediting the youngster with the discovery. As for the creature that once possessed the tooth, Sertich says that it likely roamed the area around 68 million years ago and was "one of the last dinosaurs that lived here in Colorado." He also indicated that Charpentier's discovery will probably "kick off a lot of new research" as experts plan to revisit the area where the tooth was found to see if any other T. Rex remains can be unearthed.