It was an ocean monster. An eating machine that inhabited the depths over two million years ago. It is the megalodon, a huge shark that looks like the great white of today…only much, much bigger. In terms of size, adult megalodons could range from 30 to 80 feet in length, and weigh as much as 143,000 pounds, in other words, over 70 tons, roughly the weight of the Space Shuttle. The bite diameter was almost 10 feet on average, lager specimens would have bigger mouths, which means a full-size human would be but a morsel. The largest fossilized megalodon tooth found is 9.6 inches. There may be bigger ones, waiting to be excavated, but this is huge compared to a modern great white shark’s tooth, measuring a measly 2 inches long.
Acquiring a fossilized tooth from this prehistoric monster of the sea is not exactly difficult nor necessarily expensive. The larger the tooth, the more expensive it will be, but smaller examples can be had for your cabinet at a fairly reasonable price. In fact, you might be lucky enough to find one should you comb the beaches of America’s east coast, or chance to dig one up around Shark Tooth Hill outside of Bakersfield, California. No serious cabinet of curiosities will be complete without at least one example from these real life sea monsters.
*****