14 September 2023 , 11:21
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A diver was stunned when he spotted a massive shark tooth believed to belong to the infamous Megalodon - a shark which weighed the same as 30 great whites.
Dylan Belson “screamed underwater” when he saw the huge fang while free-diving in a river in North Carolina.
“My reaction was underwater screaming ‘Meg’ and ‘tooth’ and yelling for my friend Hunter to see,” the keen diver said.
The prehistoric Megalodon, which measured up to 60 feet in length and weighed around 75 tonnes, had a mouth so huge it could open wide enough to gobble up two adults standing side by side. Its teeth were the size of bananas and would chow down on whales, dolphins, seals and probably other sharks.
Dylan Belson, 18, “screamed underwater” when he spotted the tooth while free-diving in a river in North Carolina, US (Jam Press/Dylan Belson.)
He shared the impressive find on social media, where it garnered 1,300 likes (Jam Press/Dylan Belson.)Thankfully, the gigantic fish went extinct around 2.5million years ago after roaming the ocean for approximately 20million years.
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18-year-old Dylan measured the toothy treasure to be around 6.004 inches long, meaning it almost certainly belonged to a Megalodon who are infamous for their large teeth, the largest of which is believed to be 6.9 inches long- almost three times longer than those of the great white shark.
In August this year, a 13-year-old boy also found a tooth belonging to the superpredator, on the coast of Essex. Schoolboy Ben Evans was “jumping for joy” when he found the four-inch tooth according to his dad, Jason.
Megalodon sharks lived approximately 23 to 3.6 million years ago (Jam Press/Dylan Belson.)The Megalodon, which was the inspiration behind the Hollywood horror film ‘The Meg’, was the largest fish ever known with a ferocious bite which was 3 meters (or 9.8 feet) wide. Interestingly, adult females are thought to have been larger than their male counterparts, in both length and mass.
Although today’s swimmers don’t need to worry about bumping into a Megalodon in the sea, their slightly smaller and less hungry descendants still prowl the sea.
Megalodons, illustrated here, lived in prehistoric times (Getty Images/iStockphoto)On the morning of Tuesday September 12, a 38-year-old surfer from South Carolina was bit in the face by a mystery shark, thought to be a great white, after falling off his board. The incident happened at New Smyrna Beach, Florida, the so-called shark bite capital of the world.
Last week, a video was released of the dramatic moment where a huge great white sunk its teeth into a diving cage in South Africa while crew members shouted and tried to get the shark to stop.