Woman Discovers Giant Ancient Megalodon Shark Tooth

Jessica Rose-Standafer Owens was out for the day near Charleston, South Carolina. She was hiking along the river in the area when she found the shark tooth and she realized it was more than just your average shark tooth.

It seems as if she found the tooth that once belonged to a Megalodon, a prehistoric predator that was between “15Woman Discovers Giant Ancient Megalodon Shark Tooth and 18 meters in length, three times longer than the largest recorded great white shark,” reports London’s Natural History Museum.

Every part of the Megalodon shark was huge, including the teeth. The shark is now extinct but the teeth have been found from time to time. The one that Owens found was 5.75 inches and weighed 15.9 ounces.

“I became excited and asked my husband (Simon) to come down and to grab the phone (to record), because who would believe we found one that close to the surface? I always hear of people finding them by digging and/or diving,” Owens told McClatchy News, according to Island Packet, of her discovery in late May.

Owens had been searching along the riverbank in Charleston with her husband for about 10 minutes when the tooth was discovered. She said that they had visited the river before to search, but they couldn’t do much looking because of the high tide. In South Carolina, the coastal area is renowned for having teeth of ancient Megalodons. At one time, it was a seafloor.

A video of the discovery was posted to her TicTok account and she shared the news on her Facebook page as well.

The Facebook post reported that the tooth was estimated to be between 3 and 5 million years old, according to the Mace Brown Museum of Natural History at the College of Charleston.

“We were shocked,” Owens said in an email according to Island Packet. “The tooth is just incredible and it’s mind-boggling that we now have a fossil on our mantle that is 3-5 million years old. Just wild.”