Australian teacher, Philip Mullaly, recently discovered prehistoric shark teeth that are estimated to be about 25 million years old. “I was walking along the beach looking for fossils, turned and saw this shining glint in a boulder and saw a quarter of the tooth exposed. I was immediately excited, it was just perfect and I knew it was an important find that needed to be shared with people,” Mullaly shared.
The tooth was three inches long and belongs to a now-extinct shark that’s named the great jagged narrow-toothed shark. It’s basically a close relative of the Megalodon shark. In total, the whole team took about 40 teeth from the boulder in which the fossils were located.
A team of paleontologists from the Museums Victoria in Melbourne were called to take care of the full excavation. The experts reveal that these teeth are enough evidence to predict that a shark might have grown more than 30 feet in length, almost double the size of a great white shark. The teeth are now on display at the museum.
According to the official Museums Victoria, this is the first fossil of its kind to be found along the Australian Surf Coast. The teeth come from the shark of the official title Carcharocles angustidens which no longer exists today. Experts from the museum expect that there will be many more discoveries like this to come in the near future.
The Megalodon that was mentioned previously is a shark whose name means “big tooth.” It is a now-extinct species of shark that lived around 23 to 2.6 million years ago. Many theorize that the Megalodon diverged from the great white shark ancestry, which would mean that the Carcharocles angustidens would also be that of a great white shark. Imagine if great white’s could get this big?
There have been related stories in the past of people discovering massive prehistoric shark teeth. Just last year a 7-year-old boy found a shark tooth in North Myrtle Beach. This tooth, in particular, came from the species Carcharocles megalodon and was estimated to be between 50 to 59 feet long. No, thanks!
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