Terrifying Tooth

A fossil from the biggest shark that ever lived washes ashore in North Carolina.

A man named Denny Bland recently found something much more interesting than a seashell on the shore of North Topsail Beach, North Carolina. He discovered a 6-inch-long tooth. The huge tooth once belonged to a gigantic prehistoric shark called a megalodon.

“Megalodon was one of the scariest predators that ever lived,” says Cynthia Crane. She’s a scientist who runs the Aurora Fossil Museum in North Carolina. “This is mostly because of its humongous size and its constant urge to eat.”

Megalodons could measure up to 60 feet long. That’s bigger than a tractor-trailer truck. It’s also about three times the size of megalodon’s modern-day relative, the great white shark.

These prehistoric giants became extinct more than 2 million years ago. Almost everything scientists know about megalodons comes from their teeth. Megalodons’ skeletons, like those of modern sharks, were made of a soft material called cartilage instead of bone. (We have cartilage in our noses and ears.) Cartilage doesn’t turn into fossils. So, unlike dinosaurs, megalodons left no skeletons. Only fossils of their hard teeth survived.

Scientists have compared the megalodon teeth they’ve found with the teeth of modern sharks. In doing so, they have been able to calculate megalodon’s massive size.

The serrated teeth—teeth that have a rough, jagged edge, similar to a saw—have also given researchers clues about what megalodons ate. Scientists think the teeth’s rough edges were designed to rip apart the flesh of giant whales.

What do you think the megalodon ate? A share that big must of had a huge appetite.