This family’s souvenir blows the tchotchkes kids bring home from summer vacation out of the water.
A family from Pennsylvania went to the Jersey Shore and came home with a prehistoric artifact - a megalodon tooth, WABC reported.
The Bowers were looking for shells in Sea Isle City when Mike Bowers saw something in a rock along the coastline and called his son over to help pull it out.
“As I pulled a shell out of the one rock, there was a hole in the rock,” Mike Bowers told WGAL. “I looked down and I was just astonished, but I couldn’t fit my hand in there. So of course I’m screaming like a crazy man over there for my son Bo to come running over because of his small hand.”
“I was just really excited at first. I was scared to put my hand down to, like, see it,” Bo Bowers said.
According to the Cape May Whale Watch and Research Center, they confirmed it was a megalodon tooth from a prehistoric shark that became extinct about 3.6 million years ago.
But while it is really, really old, finding an old shark’s tooth isn’t as rare as you may think, as sharks can shed up to 40,000 teeth over one lifetime. What is rare is that it is large, nearly the size of an adult’s hand, and intact. Also, where it was found is unusual, as they are typically in coastal waters in the Southeast, not in the Northeast, WGAL reported.
Scientists believe the largest megalodon was about 60 feet long and the longest carnivorous shark ever, according to the organization.
The Bowers said they plan on keeping the tooth, WABC reported.
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