Watch: Man finds rare full-sized ancient Megalodon shark tooth buried under sand – News18

Amateur fossil enthusiasts and paleontologists often scavenge around beaches and coasts in a bid to find Megalodon shark teeth. These massive sharks, which went extinct 3.6 million years ago, are believed to be the largest fish to ever inhabit the earth. The Megalodon sharks shed their teeth frequently and people often stumble upon these million-year-old teeth. While smaller Megalodon teeth, which are sized between 1 to 2.5 inches are commonly found, it is very rare to find a tooth from an adult shark that measures over 3.5 inch.

However, recently, a man shared a video of his discovery of a massive Megalodon tooth buried under the sand. This video was posted on ‘shrkco’, an Instagram account dedicated to shark fossils.

In the now-viral video, the fossil enthusiast digs through the sand and pulls out the triangular tooth. In the video caption, he explains the tooth as the “best Megalodon shark tooth of my life” and describes it as “5 and 1/16 inches of quality with green, yellow, and white lightning patterns”. This clip raked in 18,000 likes in a day, with many people congratulating the man for his incredible find.

In a follow-up video, @shrkco shared a high-quality and close-up video of the cleaned-up tooth and wrote, “Yesterday’s Megalodon Shark Tooth all dried out for you to enjoy all the colorful, beautiful and intricate details. If you haven’t seen the discovery video yet, check out our previous post.”

Observing the saw-like pattern on the tooth’s sides, an Instagram user wrote, “The serrations. WOW.”. Another person wrote, “So beautiful!! I see pure power”.

According to the website of the Natural History Museum in the UK, there is no definitive consensus on the size of the Megalodon Shark and experts believe that the shark’s size varied with where it lived. The Megalodon Shark’s diet was composed of big and small animals including dolphins and humpback whales. These sharks were very widely spread across oceans. So far, megalodon teeth have been found on every continent, barring Antarctica.

There is a niche but thrilling market for Megalodon teeth trading. As per Fossil Era, the largest online retailer of real fossils in the world, a seven-inch-long Megalodon tooth was once sold for $50,000, approximately Rs 41 lakh, while “small or broken teeth can be quite inexpensive”.