Walking along the shoreline, beachgoers are accustomed to finding shells, rocks, seaweed and even the occasional plastic bottle washed up on the sand.
But in North Carolina, locals have discovered a record number of prehistoric shark teeth along the coast thanks to recent coastal storms and higher than normal tides, according to the North Carolina Aquarium.
Among the fossilized teeth are fangs belonging to the Megalodon shark. The Megalodon was the biggest shark that ever lived, stretching nearly 60 ft. — about three times as long as the longest great white, according to Discovery.com.
Though the last Megalodons known to traverse the ocean floor date back to over two million years ago, divers continue to find large stores of teeth from this species of shark off the North and South Carolina coasts. Prolonged storms like Hurricane Joaquim help dislodge them from their deep water sites and onto local beaches, C.P. "Buster" Nunemaker, III, public relations coordinator at the North Carolina Aquarium on Roanoke Island, told NBC Owned Stations in an email.
An individual tooth measures the size of a human hand, serrated on the edge like a steak knife, and once lined one of three rows of teeth inside the predator’s jaw — which paleontologists say measured about 9 ft. long.
Want to own your own prehistoric relic? Don't book that flight to Charleston, South Carolina, or Wilmington, North Carolina, just yet. Local purveyors have flooded auction sites like eBay with thousands of fossilized Megalodon teeth ranging from hundreds to thousands of dollars.
