FISHERMAN ACCIDENTALLY DISCOVERS MEGALODON TOOTH

A fisherman in Maryland, United States accidentally found a megalodon tooth in the Chesapeake Bay area.

Stephen Rollins discovered the tooth, the size of his hand, while he was fishing for oysters.

It’s believed that megalodons lived on earth between 3.6 million and 23 million years ago.

Rollins told a local news agency that it happened by accident.

“We dumped the load and it just plopped down on top of the pile of oysters. I couldn’t believe it!”

Business Insider reports that megalodons were massive sharks. Because shark skeletons are mostly cartilage, researchers don’t have much physical evidence for their size, and estimations for how large they may have been are varied.

A recent study suggested megalodon’s teeth can be sued to determine the length of its jaw. This shows that the sharks are believed to have been around 18 metres to 20 metres long.

The tooth found by Rollins measured 14cm by 9cm.

According to Rollins’ wife, Babmi, researchers at Maryland’s Calvert Marine Museum said the tooth could be as old as 8 million years and possibly came from the side of a shark’s jaw.

It’s believed the teeth in a megalodon’s mouth got bigger toward the front of the mouth so the tooth found by Rollins was probably not even the biggest tooth to be found.

Image credit: CNN