WHILE many youngsters dream of spending a holiday at Disney World, 13-year-old Matthew Thompson (shown above with some of his collection) wants to spend his summer fossil hunting in rural Scotland and Wales>The Warwick Academy student’s unusual hobby started when he was given his first fossil, an iguandon bone, at the age of four. Today he has over 25 museum quality specimens in his collection, including his favourite, a 125-million-year-old Trilobite his mother gave him when he was seven.

For the past nine years Matthew has attended the Bermuda Underwater Exploration Institute’s (BUEI) Explorer’s Camp and said it was here that he became firmly hooked on fossils.

What with all those stories about sea monsters and then one day finding a megalodon tooth which made the shark in JaI> look like a cartoon character, Matthew said he has come to appreciate the Mesozoic Era and is determined to add a mosasaur’s tooth to his growing collection.

“It’s fun learning about the past,” he said, pointing to the tiny scales on an armour plated fish from the Paleozoic Era. “It’s amazing to think these things existed.”

Needless to say the youngster plans to pursue a career either in archaeology or chemistry - his “other” favourite subject.

But for now he wants to spend time submerged in the British Museum of Natural History’s extensive fossil collection and become the next Indiana Jones as he searches for that ever-elusive mosasaur tooth.