Busacca Gallery

A wonderful ancient shark tooth fossil, the beauty in this tooth is that it is very uniformed it has a wonderful surviving structure. This is a spectacular Petrified Fossil Carcharodon Megalodon Sea Shark Tooth. Megalodon, are undoubtedly the most infamous of all prehistoric sharks. megalodon teeth are the largest of any shark, extinct or living, and are among the most sought after types of shark teeth in the world. This shark lived during the late Oligocene epoch and Neogene period, about 28 to 1.5 million years ago, and ranged to a maximum length of 60 ft. The smallest teeth are only 1.2 cm (0.5 in) in height, while the largest teeth are in excess of 17.7 cm (7.0 in). The smaller teeth ranging from 3½" and 4½" are more common finds, while teeth over 5", 6", and 7" are more rare. These teeth are in extremely high demand by collectors and private investors, and they can fetch steep prices according to their size and deterioration. The larger teeth can cost as much as 3,000 dollars In the middle ages, Europeans thought they were "tongue stones" or petrified tongues of dragons. With teeth that could reach over 7 inches and a body more massive than a T-Rex, Megatooth sharks, particularly Carcharocles Megalodon, are undoubtedly the most infamous of all prehistoric sharks. This shark could eat Jaws in one bite! Most paleontologists believe the Megatooth shark lineage dates back to the giant mackerel shark of the Paleocene, Otodus obliquus. Otodus was the top predator of the Paleocene oceans. Throughout the Eocene Otodus teeth became more and more serrated. The Eocene Tologaysor (say that 3 times in a row) formation in Kazakhstan shows this transition nicely. Each zone of the formation has Otodus teeth that are slightly more serrated over geologic time until they start looking like an early Carcharocles tooth.

Over time the Megatooth shark went through slight morphological changes. The teeth became more regularly serrated, the Otodus cusps got smaller, the crown got broader, and the overall size increased. Paleontologists assigned each slight tooth change of the Megatooth shark to a new Carcharocles species. The Megatooth shark reached its high mark as C. megalodon, a shark of monstrous proportions. Once the Otodus teeth became mostly serrated, paleontologists renamed the serrated Otodus genus to the Carcharocles genus, and thus the Carcharocles genus arose. Where the genus transition occurs depends on which paleontologist you ask. For instance, one transitional form, O. aksuaticus is called C. askuaticus by some; others regard C. auriculatus to be O. auriculatus. Regardless of which transitional form is officially called a Carcharocles is a moot point. It is clear the Megatooth shark lineage (Carcharocles) was born from the Otodus lineage.

Link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shark_tooth

A shark tooth is one of the numerous teeth of a shark. Sharks continually shed their teeth; some Carcharhiniformes shed approximately 35,000 teeth in a lifetime, replacing those that fall out. There are four basic types of shark teeth: dense flattened, needle–like, pointed lower with triangular upper, and non–functional. The type of tooth that a shark has depends on its diet and feeding habits.