A 12-year-old schoolgirl made an astonishing discovery when she found an enormous tooth from a prehistoric megalodon shark, the largest shark that ever lived, on a beach in Essex, UK.
Cydney Root was searching the beach at Walton-on-the-Naze for fossils with her aunt Sophie Freestone when she spotted the massive tooth, big enough to fill an adult human’s hand. Aunt Sophie instantly recognized that it belonged to the mighty megalodon shark that ruled the oceans 20 million years ago. The name “megalodon” itself means “large tooth” in Greek.
“We’ve always hunted for shark teeth, we’ve got jars of them and we were saying that day how amazing it would be to find a meg tooth, and we found one,” said Sophie Freestone, 29. The pair had gone to the beach the day after there was a major cliff collapse, exposing new parts of the shore. “It was just sitting there on the surface. It was my niece Cydney that found it.”
The huge size of the fossil is a sobering reminder of the enormous scale of the megalodon shark. Adults grew up to 60 feet in length, larger than modern whales, and their jaws were lined with 276 teeth, each the size of a human hand. Scientists estimate megalodon’s bite force was 10 times that of today’s great white shark. The shark’s huge size and power have recently inspired Hollywood films like The Meg.
Finding megalodon teeth is a longstanding family hobby, but this was the first time any of them had uncovered a tooth from the massive prehistoric shark. “We were really shocked and amazed; really happy and excited,” said Sophie. “I was glad I was with her and I’m really proud that she found it.”
Cydney now plans to frame the megalodon tooth and display it on her wall. Megalodon teeth are rare finds in the UK, according to experts at the Natural History Museum, though Walton-on-the-Naze is one location where they have been uncovered before. They are more commonly found in the southeastern U.S., Morocco, and Australia. The megalodon shark lived from 20 to 3.6 million years ago before going extinct.
The discovery highlights how new fossils can still emerge from the UK’s coastline, revealing insights into prehistoric life that once thrived in now-vanished ancient seas. For a 12-year-old girl, it’s a discovery of a lifetime and a memory that will last for generations.
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