Fisherman finds huge megalodon tooth in oysters pulled from Maryland’s Chesapeake Bay
Another ancient shark tooth has been found along Maryland’s Chesapeake Bay, only this time it’s even bigger.
The 5.5-inch megalodon tooth came out of the bay Feb. 10 hidden in a load of oysters, according to Stephen Rollins, captain of the fishing boat Undertaker.
That makes the tooth about a half-inch longer than the one found Christmas Day by a 9-year-old girl at Maryland’s Calvert Cliffs State Park.
“We dumped the load and it just plopped down on top of the pile of oysters. I couldn’t believe it!” Rollins told McClatchy News.
“I was stunned! It took me a second to register what I was actually looking at. I picked it up and said ‘thank you, Jesus!’ It really is a timepiece.”
Rollins and first mate Jeremiah Jerry Jordan found the tooth while dredging in 20 feet of water, he said, about “a mile or so south of the mouth of the Patuxent River” in St Mary’s County.
It measures at 5.5 inches by 3.5 inches, Stephen Rollins’ wife, Bambi Rollins, told McClatchy News.
She said she has since taken it for analysis at the Calvert Marine Museum in Solomons, where she learned the tooth may be 8 million years old and was likely on the side of the shark’s jaws.
“This isn’t the biggest tooth in this sharks mouth as they get bigger toward the front of the mouth,” Bambi Rollins said.
Megalodons, known as “the top predator” of their time, roamed what is now the East Coast “between 23 and 3.6 million years ago,” according Smithsonian Magazine.
They averaged 6 feet in height and were 50 feet long, though some may have spanned up to 60 feet, based on a 2019 report by Kenshu Shimada, a professor at DePaul University in Chicago.
A 7.48-inch tooth reportedly found in Peru is considered to be a record size for megalodon teeth, according to FossilEra.com.
On Feb. 12, Bambi Rollins shared news of the discovery with the 20,800-plus members of the Workboat Life Facebook group, with her post receiving more than 1,000 comments and reactions.
“My husband says for the right price he’d sell it,” Bambi Rollins said. “But, I’d rather keep it locked in our safe. This is a once in a lifetime find and I know it will be a piece that we’ll show off and talk about for years to come.”
This story was originally published February 20, 2023 at 8:59 AM with the headline "Fisherman finds huge megalodon tooth in oysters pulled from Maryland’s Chesapeake Bay."