One little girl in Maryland found a big surprise for Christmas, but it wasn't under her tree – it was a 'once-in-a-lifetime' shark tooth from an ancient 50-foot megalodon.
, Sampson said that the tooth is five inches long and that her 9-year-old daughter found it along Calvert Beach, which sits along Chesapeake Bay.
Stephen Godfrey, curator of paleontology at the Calvert Marine Museum, told CBS News that the tooth belonged to the Otodus megalodon, a now-extinct shark species that was"one of the largest, if not the largest marine macropredator the world has ever known." Specifically, the tooth is from the left side of the shark's upper jaw, Godfrey said, which is known because of the width of the tooth's root. Godfrey said the shark that would have had the tooth would likely have been between 45 and 50 feet long.
"The massive root would have anchored this tooth firmly to the jaw, allowing megalodon the bite through any whale or dolphin it could catch," Godfrey said."We know that it was an active predator because from time to time we find fossilized whale and dolphin bones that preserve tooth gouge marks made by megalodon." , this species lived between 23 to 3.6 million years ago.
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