Ancient whale fossil discovered by 10-year-old boy

A big archaeological discovery has been made on the coast of Northern Ireland by a local boy having a walk on the beach.

George was walking along Portmuck Harbour in Islandmagee with his parents when he came across a huge fossilised whale head.

And now, lots of scientists are on the case to discover what kind of whale it is, and where it came from.

It's thought it could date from as far back as the Bronze Age, which in Britain started about 4,500 years ago.

And while it'll take a bit of time to find out for sure, tools that were discovered with the bone suggest it could be around 3,000 years old.

George told BBC News NI that the "weird patterns" on the bone helped him realise he'd found something special.

He said: "The bits that stuck out, it just didn't look like a rock. I thought it was a bone, but I just wasn't too sure. So I asked my dad and he said it was definitely a fossil."

He also said being a part of the process has been really exciting for him.

"It's been so cool, it shows you what you can find and then to see what happens after you find something - what the experts do with it, how they figure it out, how they do that."

When excavated, or dug out of the earth, the whale head measured about a foot (30cm) long and was incredibly heavy.

It needs to be cleaned for potentially a week before it can be thoroughly studied, but one early theory is that the whale could have been part of an ancient Sunday roast.

Geologist Ian Enlander works with the Irish Whale and Dolphin Group, and after sending some pictures of the bone to the Natural History Museum, has determined that the whale is likely to be a species called the Cuvier's beaked whale.

But two things were curious to him: one is that the fossil seemed to have been deliberately buried, as opposed to naturally covered by soil and rock over thousands of years.

And the other is that those beaked whales are deep sea creatures, and not often seen in Ireland.

Ian said: "I've seen beaked whales in the Azores. I've seen them at the Bay of Biscay. I've never seen them around Ireland. They've never been recorded in this area. So how did it get here?

"I suppose the great wish would be that the archaeologists examine the skull and find evidence of butcher marks, that Bronze Age people have been there, trying to decapitate it and utilising the rest of the body perhaps as Sunday roast."

George has some advice for other kids who want to become archaeologists.

He said: "Just keep your eyes open and see, you might find something good as well. Be curious. You never know what might happen."