A PREHISTORIC tooth of a giant fish that is at least 10 million years old has shed some light on Kent’s fascinating underwater past.

The tooth, from a shark which lived between 10 and 15 million years ago, was found by a couple, lodged in the rubble from their collapsed garden wall.

It is the first of its kind to be found in Kent and shows that in the late Tertiary period, much of Maidstone would have been under water and home to some seriously large marine life.

The tooth has now been identified as from the carcharodon – a massive shark distantly related to our modern day Great White but four times bigger in size.

Angela Foster and her partner Graham Nash, of Farleigh Lane, East Farleigh, near Maidstone, discovered the amazing find when a ragstone wall in the back yard of her 400-year old home collapsed.

They were surveying the damage when Mr Nash, an antiques dealer, saw the tooth, the size of his hand, sticking out of the rubble.

Miss Foster, who works for the Environment Agency, said: “It looked like a piece of flint at first. As soon as I looked at it I thought it was prehistoric.”

The couple took the tooth to Maidstone Museum, where Dr Ed Jarzembowski, keeper of natural history, confirmed their suspicions.

“We have had a lot of inquiries since the opening of the new dinosaur exhibition and they have brought me all kinds of goods, but this was the most unusual and exciting,” he said. “This animal was between 60ft and 90ft.”

But the find has also confused the natural history guru. “How on earth did this shark’s tooth get mixed into this wall?” he added.

“Was there a great collector from times past who lived in the couple’s home and buried it in the wall, or did it somehow get in the ragstone mix?”