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SASAYAMA, Hyogo -- An elementary school boy found a fossilized dinosaur tooth some 140 million years old in a dry riverbed here, school officials said. Kira Adachi, 11, a sixth-grader at the Sasayama Municipal Oyama Elementary School, found the fossil on the bed of the Sasayama River during a fossil hunting trip on July 10. The approximately 6-millimeter fossil was later confirmed as that of a tooth of a small carnivorous dinosaur from the early Cretaceous period (about 140 million to 136 million years ago). "I thought it was a seashell, but when I took a closer look at it, I saw it had a tooth shape," said Adachi. The school named the fossil "Oyama Ryu," meaning "Dragon of Oyama." The fossil will be displayed at the Sasayama civic center from Aug. 21. An expert who examined the fossil said that the tooth probably fell out of... [read full story]
