# I found an enormous megalodon tooth!



## jesspark (Jan 12, 2009)

My husband Brandon and I have gone diving at Venice, FL ("shark tooth capital of the world") once before -- just under a year ago, with Captain Steve Thacker and Marie aboard Florida West Scuba School's _Hammerhead_. We had a great time, found some goodies (including several teeth from the megalodon, a prehistoric shark that may have been the size of a bus), and started counting down until the next time we could go out fossil-hunting.

May twelfth was the big day. We woke up at four-thirty in the morning in order to get ready, get on the road, and get to Florida West Scuba by eight AM, and, despite being groggy, we were excited to get back out in the water again. I had to quit my job at a local aquarium back in December and hadn't been diving since, so I was definitely looking forward to our two dives.

My first dive started out horribly. After about fifteen minutes down, I got the line from my dive flag looped over the anchor line, and, when I came up to free it, I managed to tangle myself up like a manatee in a crab trap line. As I moved to the rear of the boat so Steve and Marie could help me out, I realized that my tank had come loose, and then I dropped my freaking mask. (Fortunately, another diver found it later.) I wanted to curl up and die from embarrassment -- I've been diving since I was eighteen years old, and I was making these awful rookie mistakes in front of the captain and his mate. Flustered beyond belief, I entertained the idea of just calling it quits and hauling my butt back on the boat, but, with a spare mask loaned to me by the lovely Marie, I went back down to try my luck.

And I'm so glad I did.

Within just a few minutes, I pulled this beauty off the sea floor:








It's not intact, there are only a couple of specks of enamel left on it, and the serrations are long gone, but it's HUGE. The base is about four and a half inches across, and Steve estimates that, if the tip wasn't broken off, the tooth would be about seven inches long.

Here's an admittedly cruddy cell phone picture taken in the car on the way home that shows you the tooth in its entirety:








I didn't find much on the second dive -- a couple of smaller megs, a whale vertebrae, and some miscellaneous shark teeth -- but, really, with a find like this one on the first dive, asking for more would just be greedy. =) Brandon, like last time, found the pretty, intact, serrated teeth; if we could only combine our powers to find pretty, intact, serrated, HUGE teeth, we'd be in business!

Here are some better pictures, taken after all the barnacles and other crud were removed:









_One view of the tooth._









_The opposite side._









_From the root to the broken tip, it measures about 5.25" long._









_Across the root, it measures around 4.5" wide._









_This is the new tooth next to one of last year's. Yow! Quite a difference._​
That was one big fish. Ohh, I love sharks.


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## Anju  (Nov 8, 2008)

AWESOME!!!

Thanks for sharing -


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## kevin63 (Feb 10, 2009)

Wow!  That was a big one.  What a great find.  That had to be exciting.  Worked in an aquarium?  That would be a cool job.  I can sit and watch fish, sharks, etc. forever.


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## Gertie Kindle (Nov 6, 2008)

I love Venice, but haven't been there in years.  I never knew that about the sharks teeth there.  I visited for the pelicans.  

That's some tooth.  That would be about half the size of the head of the shark I caught years ago.

What a find.  I know you're thrilled.  Thanks for sharing.


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## Neversleepsawink;) (Dec 16, 2008)

Very cool!


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## jesspark (Jan 12, 2009)

Thanks, Dona, Kevin, Gertie, and Neversleepawink! 

And, yeah, I'll probably never find a bigger tooth than that; the largest intact meg teeth on record today are, I believe, 7 1/8" and 7 3/8" long, and mine may have been as long or longer if it wasn't broken. Pretty unreal! It's so neat to hold in your hand something that's at least a million and a half to two million years old -- a tiny piece of one of the largest predators to ever exist on our planet. Makes you feel small in more ways than one!

I've worked at a couple of marine facilities here in Orlando; I've been an educator, a diver, and I've helped to care for and/or train dolphins, manatees, seals, and sea lions. It's cool, but it's a lot of hard work, too! Not to mention, I think my fingers are _still_ all prune-y from spending so much time in the water. 

Gertie, you can actually find all sorts of "normal" shark teeth on the beaches of Venice, FL; you don't even have to go diving! My husband and I have found over fifty teeth just sitting in the shallow water and sifting through the shells and sand for anything black -- that likely means it's fossilized, and you can find smaller teeth as well as stingray mouth plates and barb fragments. You used to be able to find meg teeth on the beach, too (and many more of the sand tiger, sandbar/brown, lemon, and tiger shark teeth), but the sand dumped on the shore as part of the beach restoration project has buried a lot of good stuff.


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## Bren S. (May 10, 2009)

Wow! that is a huge tooth.I can only imagine how big that shark must've been


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## Anju  (Nov 8, 2008)

I did find a  1/2 inch shark tooth in a dry river bed in NE Texas many years ago!


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## jesspark (Jan 12, 2009)

Sugar said:


> Wow! that is a huge tooth.I can only imagine how big that shark must've been


No one's certain, since a shark's skeleton is made of cartilage and decomposes after the animal dies, but, comparing the teeth to those of modern-day sharks, scientists figure the meg may have been more than fifty feet long, and that's being conservative; some estimates place them at being longer than sixty feet! Considering how large this tooth is, it was probably one of the bigger megs out there, swimming around and eating whales for breakfast.



Anju No. 469 said:


> I did find a 1/2 inch shark tooth in a dry river bed in NE Texas many years ago!


Too cool! Do you happen to know what kind it is? If you know what to look for, you can often identify a shark's species (or get pretty close) just by looking at a tooth!


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## Anju  (Nov 8, 2008)

Didn't get to keep it - I gave it to my cousin who took me shark tooth hunting!


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## Kathy (Nov 5, 2008)

That is incredible.  I would not want to be face to face with a shark that size.


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## rho (Feb 12, 2009)

that is WAY cool


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## jesspark (Jan 12, 2009)

Shoot, I'm going shark tooth-hunting with you, Dona!  

Kathy, I doubt a shark of this size would even notice us!  =)  Megs liked to prey on whales; a human, in comparison, would be like eating an M&M. A bony little M&M.

Thanks, rho!


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## Kathy (Nov 5, 2008)

I don't want to test that theory. LOL   My oldest daughter won't go into the ocean because she is so afraid there will be a shark. Her family came and visited us last Summer and the 3 boys wanted to see a shark. She was standing on the front of the boat the whole time were snorkeling looking out at the water. I don't know what she thought she could do if she had seen a shark. Poor thing, she said on land after the first day.


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## Neversleepsawink;) (Dec 16, 2008)

I'm so jealous....I never learned how to swim.  Wish I could do cool things like that.


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## MichelleR (Feb 21, 2009)

jesspark said:


> Kathy, I doubt a shark of this size would even notice us! =) Megs liked to prey on whales; a human, in comparison, would be like eating an M&M. A bony little M&M.


All the same, I think I've been plunged back to my post-Jaws childhood fear of bodies of water bigger than a bathtub.


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## meljackson (Nov 19, 2008)

WOW! That is very cool! 
You have a very nice smile by the way. 

Melissa


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## Michael R. Hicks (Oct 29, 2008)

Holy cow! That's awesome! I'm not all that into marine biology, but "meg" is fascinating. In the Museum of Natural History in DC, they have a replica of a megaladon jaw hanging next to one wall, with an outline drawn on the wall showing roughly how big the fish would be (and inside it is a large great white shark and its jaw).

All I can say is that I'm glad they're extinct!!


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## jesspark (Jan 12, 2009)

Kathy said:


> I don't want to test that theory. LOL  My oldest daughter won't go into the ocean because she is so afraid there will be a shark. Her family came and visited us last Summer and the 3 boys wanted to see a shark. She was standing on the front of the boat the whole time were snorkeling looking out at the water. I don't know what she thought she could do if she had seen a shark. Poor thing, she said on land after the first day.





MichelleR said:


> All the same, I think I've been plunged back to my post-Jaws childhood fear of bodies of water bigger than a bathtub.


Aww, that's too bad!  More people are killed every year by lightning, dogs, deer, and coconuts than by sharks, but, thanks to movies like _Jaws_ (which I love as a movie, but hate for what it did to the reputation of the shark) and _Deep Blue Sea_, a lot of people are scared of sharks when, honestly, sharks should be the ones afraid of us.

After being in the water with both through the course of my jobs in the marine life field, I'd rather be in the ocean with a wild shark than a wild dolphin, since sharks tend to leave you alone while dolphins like to "play" (where "play" often means "razor-sharp teeth rake" and "five hundred pound body slam") as well as have the potential to be aggressive. I've been close enough to kiss nine foot long sharks, and they couldn't care less about me, while I bear a five-year-old scar on one hand from a young dolphin who just wanted to "play." I love dolphins, but they're extremely powerful and very curious animals -- not necessarily the safest combination!

Although there are sharks that have been known to bite humans unprovoked, I can count the number of aggressive species on both hands, and there are close to four _hundred_ kinds of sharks. As a whole, their bad reputation is unbelievably unfair, and don't even get me started on what the continued killing of sharks is doing to our ecosystem... hooo, boy! Sharks usually kill about ten humans on a yearly basis; humans kill _one hundred million_ sharks. Peter Benchley, author of Jaws, came to regret the part he played in giving the shark its undeserved bad reputation, and once said, "[T]he shark in an updated Jaws could not be the villain; it would have to be written as the victim, for, world-wide, sharks are much more the oppressed than the oppressors." He became a shark advocate and tried to educate the same public that he terrified from the 1970s on.

As you can tell, I love me some sharks.  My husband and I hope to go diving with great whites some day -- preferably outside of a cage. I think they're incredibly beautiful.



meljackson said:


> WOW! That is very cool!
> You have a very nice smile by the way.
> 
> Melissa


Shucks, Melissa, thank you!


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## jesspark (Jan 12, 2009)

kreelanwarrior said:


> Holy cow! That's awesome! I'm not all that into marine biology, but "meg" is fascinating. In the Museum of Natural History in DC, they have a replica of a megaladon jaw hanging next to one wall, with an outline drawn on the wall showing roughly how big the fish would be (and inside it is a large great white shark and its jaw).
> 
> All I can say is that I'm glad they're extinct!!


I vaguely remember a meg jaw reconstruction at the Museum of Natural History in DC; I visited when I was in the third grade, and I loved it. Going back is definitely on my list of things to do! I don't remember the outline, but it'd be cool to see for comparison's sake... I have such a hard time wrapping my brain around the image of a shark whose open jaws would be as tall as my husband with a body as long as a five- or six-story building is high and teeth as big as my hand! It'd be like a great white the size of a whale shark.


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## chynared21 (Oct 28, 2008)

*Holy cow...that is one big tooth!!! I'm having Jaws flashbacks and I thought that one was big *


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## MichelleR (Feb 21, 2009)

jesspark said:


> Although there are sharks that have been known to bite humans unprovoked, I can count the number of aggressive species on both hands, and there are close to four _hundred_ kinds of sharks. As a whole, their bad reputation is unbelievably unfair, and don't even get me started on what the continued killing of sharks is doing to our ecosystem... hooo, boy! Sharks usually kill about ten humans on a yearly basis; humans kill _one hundred million_ sharks. Peter Benchley, author of Jaws, came to regret the part he played in giving the shark its undeserved bad reputation, and once said, "[T]he shark in an updated Jaws could not be the villain; it would have to be written as the victim, for, world-wide, sharks are much more the oppressed than the oppressors." He became a shark advocate and tried to educate the same public that he terrified from the 1970s on.


I was funnin' you, really, and sharing the effect of Jaws on a 7-year-old.

I'd mentioned the same information about Benchley's turn-around to others. He had no way to really know that his story would become such an indelible part of pop culture.

In my neck of the woods, it's the wolf with the unfairly maligned reputation.

As the saying goes, _until lions have their historians, tales of the hunt shall always glorify the hunter._


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## marianneg (Nov 4, 2008)

What a great find!  I think sharks are beautiful, too.  I remember reading a book when I was a kid about a guy who worked with sevengill sharks, and I think that started my fascination.  I don't think I want to see one up close in person (or at least not a great white), but I love reading about them and watching them on TV or at the aquarium.


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## ladyvolz (Dec 23, 2008)

Wow that is incredible!  And it's sort of ironic as Steve Alten's new book Meg: Hell's Aquarium was published a week or so ago and is in kindle format.  I love that series.


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## chynared21 (Oct 28, 2008)

ladyvolz said:


> Wow that is incredible! And it's sort of ironic as Steve Alten's new book Meg: Hell's Aquarium was published a week or so ago and is in kindle format. I love that series.


*Bummer...doesn't seem like the first two in the series are available for the Kindle yet.*


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## Angela (Nov 2, 2008)

How awesome and exciting for you Jess!! I love snorkeling, but have never had the opportunity to learn to dive. How cool!!

One more thing I noticed that no one else has mentioned...  You say you have been diving since 18?? I swear in that pic you don't even look 18!!   You remind me of my daughter!! She is 34 and barely looks 18.... same blonde hair and blue eyes too!


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## marianneg (Nov 4, 2008)

chynared21 said:


> ladyvolz said:
> 
> 
> > Wow that is incredible! And it's sort of ironic as Steve Alten's new book Meg: Hell's Aquarium was published a week or so ago and is in kindle format. I love that series.
> ...


Oooh, cool! I wish the first one was on Kindle, though! Can these be read out of order?


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## chynared21 (Oct 28, 2008)

marianner said:


> *Bummer...doesn't seem like the first two in the series are available for the Kindle yet.*
> 
> Oooh, cool! I wish the first one was on Kindle, though! Can these be read out of order?


*I was wondering that myself...I'm a bit of a stickler for reading in order *


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## jesspark (Jan 12, 2009)

chynared21 said:


> *Holy cow...that is one big tooth!!! I'm having Jaws flashbacks and I thought that one was big *


Peter Benchley's great white was supposed to be twenty-five feet long with teeth the size of a shot glass. It would've been probably less than half the size of a meg. 



MichelleR said:


> I was funnin' you, really, and sharing the effect of Jaws on a 7-year-old.
> 
> I'd mentioned the same information about Benchley's turn-around to others. He had no way to really know that his story would become such an indelible part of pop culture.
> 
> ...


Hehe, sorry if I got up on my soapbox!  When I was a marine conservation education instructor, I used to spend my days educating people about the ocean and its inhabitants, and my absolute favorite part was teaching them about sharks... and hopefully getting them to change their minds a little bit, or at least question why they were afraid of sharks and not, say, deer, when Bambi is more likely to kill you than Jaws is. I guess old habits die hard. =)

Very apt quote, BTW!



marianner said:


> What a great find! I think sharks are beautiful, too. I remember reading a book when I was a kid about a guy who worked with sevengill sharks, and I think that started my fascination. I don't think I want to see one up close in person (or at least not a great white), but I love reading about them and watching them on TV or at the aquarium.


There are some broadnose sevengill sharks at the Monterey Bay Aquarium, which Brandon and I visit whenever we're out in California, and they're so neat-looking! They're a very "old" species of shark (as opposed to, say, the hammerhead), and it's interesting to see what is, essentially, a living fossil swimming right around in front of you.



ladyvolz said:


> Wow that is incredible! And it's sort of ironic as Steve Alten's new book Meg: Hell's Aquarium was published a week or so ago and is in kindle format. I love that series.


Thanks for the heads-up on the new Meg book!  I read Meg and The Trench when they first came out, but I don't remember a whole lot about either of them, and I'd love to get the series on my Kindle. Time to go click on that "I'd like to read this book on Kindle" link for the first couple of books...



Angela said:


> How awesome and exciting for you Jess!! I love snorkeling, but have never had the opportunity to learn to dive. How cool!!
> 
> One more thing I noticed that no one else has mentioned... You say you have been diving since 18?? I swear in that pic you don't even look 18!!  You remind me of my daughter!! She is 34 and barely looks 18.... same blonde hair and blue eyes too!


Aww, Angela, you just made my day!  I'm twenty-six, although some days these bones feel a lot older... like after lugging around seventy pounds of scuba gear. I need to get back in shape -- and start diving again! I finally got my husband certified about a year ago, so now I have a dive buddy.


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## rho (Feb 12, 2009)

> After being in the water with both through the course of my jobs in the marine life field, I'd rather be in the ocean with a wild shark than a wild dolphin, since sharks tend to leave you alone while dolphins like to "play" (where "play" often means "razor-sharp teeth rake" and "five hundred pound body slam") as well as have the potential to be aggressive. I've been close enough to kiss nine foot long sharks, and they couldn't care less about me, while I bear a five-year-old scar on one hand from a young dolphin who just wanted to "play." I love dolphins, but they're extremely powerful and very curious animals -- not necessarily the safest combination!
> [/quote/
> 
> or bluefish -- have you ever seen them when they are in a feeding frenzy --- ACCK We were clamming and a school of bluefish came in the area after some bait fish and it was scary I tell you - it was also the fastest I was able to get back in the boat


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## jesspark (Jan 12, 2009)

rho said:


> or bluefish -- have you ever seen them when they are in a feeding frenzy --- ACCK We were clamming and a school of bluefish came in the area after some bait fish and it was scary I tell you - it was also the fastest I was able to get back in the boat


No bluefish, but I've been the safety diver during fish feeds in a local aquarium, and the jacks (crevalle jacks, horse eyes, amberjacks, etc.) would absolutely _swarm_ us. I learned pretty quickly to remember to wear my gloves! =) The sharks, on the other hand, cruised around near the bottom of the aquarium and minded their own business...


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## Susan in VA (Apr 3, 2009)

How cool  --  thank you for sharing with us!  I just read the Wikipedia entry that you linked to, and learned a lot....  once again, Kindleboards is proving most educational!  

The idea of holding something that old is indeed amazing, and humbling in some way.


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## jesspark (Jan 12, 2009)

You're so welcome, Susan! =) I didn't know how many other people here on KindleBoards would be interested in a fossilized shark tooth, but I'm always happy to educate! 

Brandon and I found several teeth and teeth fragments when we dove Venice last June... and I used to think they were a decent size at around three inches long! Here's a pic (or three):








The first frame shows me with the first meg tooth I ever found (which you can see in a photo in the original post on this thread, looking very small next to my big tooth); in the second frame, I'm "sulking" because Brandon found the tooth shown, which is absolutely PERFECT -- intact, still has all its enamel, and the serrations could cut a steak; and the last frame shows me holding both of them in one hand. Either one of them could practically be the broken _tip_ of my big tooth, but they're still very cool, especially Brandon's. That thing is gorgeous! 

The captain of our boat, who's a former geologist, told me that if the big tooth I'd found had been intact with enamel and serrations, I could've bought a new Lexus with it.  So, yeah, if I can find a tooth of that size that looks like Brandon's beautiful tooth from last year, I'll be one happy girl!  (Of course, I'd have a cast made before selling it; it'd be hard to part with something like that.)


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## chynared21 (Oct 28, 2008)

*From a non-diver...intact or not, still a pretty cool find *


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## kindle zen (Mar 18, 2009)

that's one cool find.  i've long been interested in megs but haven't kept up to date on the latest developments about them.  i'm a little surprised there's still lots of debate on their size.  you might also find meg teeth on dry land that were once covered by oceans.  if i ever invent a time machine i'll be sure to get some nice pics of those magnificent critters and maybe figure out why they went extinct...i like my dreams big


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## jesspark (Jan 12, 2009)

Thanks, chynared21 and kindle zen! When you invent that time machine, kindle zen, see if you can find some unfossilized teeth while you're at it -- I'd love to have a big, gleaming white meg chomper! 

And speaking of megs... ladyvolz brought up Steve Alten and his MEG book series earlier in this thread. The third and fourth books are available on Kindle; the first and second are not. Since Steve Alten's website states that he answers all his emails from readers, I wrote to him a few days ago to inquire about the possibility of MEG: A Novel of Deep Terror and The Trench being Kindle-ized, and his response was _really_ disappointing.



> Je3ss
> 
> I doubt the first two boosk will be converted. Here's a quick update on my work:


The next seven paragraphs were about the other books he's working on, the ongoing quest to get MEG out of developmental hell and onto the silver screen, his website ("Have you been to my website?" Well, yeah, Steve, that's where I got your email address...), contests to become a character in his upcoming novels, his MySpace, his Twitter account... and not one more word about MEG and The Trench on the Kindle.

It definitely rubbed me the wrong way. I didn't expect a nice, personal letter like mine in response, since I know Alten's busy, but I also didn't expect a sales pitch and a plea to "let other people know about my work"; just because I wrote him an email, that doesn't mean I'm a walking advertisement for the MEG series.


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## koolmnbv (Mar 25, 2009)

WOW what an amazing adventure! What a great find! I couldn't imagine the size of the shark that came from.


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## jesspark (Jan 12, 2009)

Even with real-life comparisons -- as long as a five- or six-story building is tall with an open mouth large enough for my husband to stand upright in and teeth the size of my hand -- I _still_ can't imagine how big that animal must have been! Megalodons were just plain *immense*.


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