Megalodon Tooth

 

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.