An immediate thought when holding a small megalodon tooth
for the first time is attempting to understand how it could possibly be over
two million years old. Running fingers along the edges reveals how sharp the
tooth is, and with a triangular shape, it makes sense why smaller shark teeth
made excellent projectile points for arrows. This specimen was a gift to our
collection from a fellow fossil hunter and it certainly is an exciting
addition.
Trying to figure out how common or rare big tooth shark fossils
are can be a challenge. As the largest ancient shark even by conservative
estimates, maximum sized megalodon had five rows of teeth with close to three
hundred individual teeth filling the jaw in total. Multiply the number of teeth
per animal by how many existed over a twenty million year period.
The anterior megalodon tooth pictured here measures 1.81
inches on length one, 1.56 inches on length two, and 1.38 inches wide, suggesting
it resided deeper in the jaw of a conservative size or younger shark. Some of
the largest anterior megalodon teeth are more than three times the size of this
one, measuring upwards of six and seven inches on the greatest length.