A schoolboy out looking for shells on the beach found a huge, prehistoric shark tooth instead.
Sammy Shelton, six, wasn’t expecting to find the four-inch tooth, which is around three million years old.The tooth was found on Bawdsey Beach in Suffolk, a hotspot for fossil hunters – although the finds are often hidden in clay.
It once belonged to a huge shark called a megalodon, whose fins alone were thought to be the size of an adult human.Its name means ‘big tooth’, and it had 250 thick teeth designed to grab prey and break its bones, including whales.Sammy took his ancient fossil into school for show and tell, and has also earned a special ‘explorer’ badge from his local Beavers group since finding the tooth.‘Really we were looking for interesting shells on the beach but instead we got this megalodon tooth.
‘There was one guy down there who’s been looking all his life for a megalodon tooth and never found anything of this size.’ Evolutionary biologist Ben Garrod, who works at UEA, checked pictures of the tooth and said it was once of just a handful found in Britain each year.Peter said: ‘At the moment he’s keeping it by his bedside.‘Sammy wants to go back again. He likes being outside.’
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