Searching for Megalodon Teeth near Charleston South Carolina

It is the dawn of another fine day near Charleston, SC. The sun is shining, the birds are singing, and the earth calls out to fossil hunters to dig for prehistoric treasure. The prize is a tooth from one of the greatest predators of all time – the megalodon shark. Millions of years ago the ocean levels were much higher than today and the sea covered much of the east coast of the US, including the entire lowcountry of South Carolina. The coastal waters were perfect habitat for whales, seals, dugongs, fish, and sharks. Imagine a huge sperm whale surfacing for a breath of air, watched from afar by a megalodon shark with teeth bigger than a human hand. The giant shark is hungry and the whale is in the wrong place at the right time. The megalodon accelerates from below towards the whale which realizes too late the shark is there. Impact. The giant shark slams into its prey, its teeth sink into the whale. The blood in the water attracts other sharks and the feeding frenzy rages. While sharks feed, they lose teeth which fall to the ocean floor unnoticed, disappearing into the sediment. This scene happens day after day for millions of years. Eventually, megalodon went the way of the dinosaurs, extinct, lost to time. But all those teeth they shed are still there and I want to find them. In some areas, the prehistoric ocean bottom is close to the modern surface and it is possible to dig for megalodon teeth with a shovel. First we remove the overburden, the useless dirt, sand, and clay that covers fossil bearing formation. Moving dirt is the part that seems like work. Eventually though we expose the layer we are hunting for. The phosphate nodules are the indicator. That’s when we slow down and start looking closely. The formation consists of mostly rocks, but it is not uniform because the underlying formations are not flat. Waterflow washed heavy materials like fossils and rocks from high spots to low spots. In some areas, the layer is thin with very little in the way of fossils. It is not productive to dig in that, so sometimes digging is just exercise. In other areas there are piles of pea sized gravel that looks like fish tank rock. That stuff is loaded with little shark teeth, so if you want to find hundreds of teeth in a day, that’s what you look for. You can find megalodon teeth in that stuff but normally they’re very worn because little rocks move around a lot in the water. Over millions of years its like a grinder. Megalodon teeth can get big so they get deposited with big rocks and bones and that’s what I look for. Usually I don’t find that kind of layer because it’s not everywhere. Some sites just don’t have it. But when I find it I go into digging frenzy mode because I know what can be in it. Remember the whale that was eaten in the beginning of this description? Its bones would be there. My shovel cuts the sand and hits big rocks. I pry those out and push them aside. Then a flat, grainy edge. Its as big as my forearm. That’s a fossilized piece of whale jaw. I’m on the right track. More sand, more rocks. My back is starting to hurt and I take a break and sip some water. I go see what my son is finding. He's got a gigantic angustidens tooth – that’s the evolutionary grandfather of megalodon. We often find those mixed in with the gravel while digging for megalodon teeth. They got redeposited there from even older formations that were eroded and redeposited. What a score, his tooth is almost four inches long, a giant for the angustidens shark. Then I stroll over to my girlfriend to see how she’s doing. She’s got a big one, a megalodon tooth. She’s thrilled! A big tooth in the bag will do that. I just saw a snake, a common occurrence while fossil collecting in the south. I stop for a moment to observe. Back to my hole. My shovel pushes past the sand and stops abruptly. I carefully push away the sediment and I see tooth enamel. I found a megalodon tooth! I carefully dig away the surrounding dirt. These fossils can be fragile so care is necessary to properly extract the teeth intact. It looks like a stunner! Today will not end with empty pockets. I can only wonder what else I’ll unearth today?

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