Carlyn Kranking Sept 18, 2024
Shark teeth are often considered the most common vertebrate fossils in the world, and for good reason. Each individual
shark has rows upon rows of chompers that fall out and get replaced in conveyor belt-like fashion. A single shark can
lose approximately one tooth per week.
Considering the fact that sharks have swum the worldâs seas for more than 400 million years, the animals have left
behind an extensive fossil record. Today, their preserved teeth, which tend to have a dark color, can be found in the
sediments of rivers, along coastlines or even on the side of the road, depending on where you are.
âIf you can find one in one location, you will certainly find more,â says Fred Mazza, president of the fossil tour company
Paleo Discoveries in Florida. âTheyâre not all large, large teeth. A lot of them just naturally fall into a size range from
half an inch to one inch. But theyâre not rare to find at all.â
Teeth are the only widely available record of prehistoric sharks, since the cartilaginous bodies of the predatory fish do
not preserve easily. If scientists want to learn about the sharksâ anatomy, diet or ecology, they have to get clues from
teeth. 1
Sora Kim, a geochemist and shark tooth researcher at the University of California, Merced, studies the chemical
elements in fossilized shark teeth to unravel some of the mysteries about the life history of these animals. Last year,
her team reported a shocking discovery: that the megalodon, the giant extinct shark considered to be the largest fish that
ever lived, may have been warm-blooded like mammals.
Today, more than one-third of shark and ray species are threatened with extinction, largely due to overfishing. But
climate change is another threatâa study published this month found sharks are abandoning stressed coral reefs as
oceans warm.
According to Kim, studying sharks of the past could provide clues to how modern sharks will fare under climate change.
During the Eocene epoch (roughly 33.9 million to 56 million years ago), oceans also warmed, and itâs often used as an
analogue for whatâs happening today. âHow did the sharks cope?â she says. âHow did they make it through mass
extinction events, or climate warming or climate cooling? I think that fossil shark teeth, theyâve recorded all that
information. And weâre just now developing the tools to be able to unlock that box.â
If youâre planning to collect fossil shark teeth, experts recommend keeping a few guidelines in mind. First, donât
collect on private land without permissionânever trespass in order to find fossils. You also canât collect fossils from
national parks without a research permit.
Additionally, Kim urges fossil hunters to consider donating their finds to museums, where they could help spur scientific
discoveries. Having citizen scientists collect teeth can save researchers precious money, time and labor from field
expeditions. And often, in shark tooth research, itâs a bit of a numbers gameâthe more teeth a scientist can examine,
the more information they have to work with, elevating the quality of their data.
A paleontology student displays a tooth from an 8 to 12 million-year-old mako shark that he found in Scotts Valley, California. Paul Chinn/San
Francisco Chronicle via Getty Images
âI think that shark paleoecology is kind of on this cusp of doing all these great things,â Kim says. âWe need to be able
to analyze teethâeither their shape, or their chemistry, or just counting the number of teeth and things like thatâto be
able to get a better sense of what taxa lived where, what they were doing, how they were interacting. And by having
these teeth in private collections, thatâs taking out some of that data.â 2
If you intend to donate your collections, Kim recommends sorting teeth in different jars or boxes based on where they
were found. Contact a local natural history museum or university, which might have a paleontology collection, and it
may have a use for the finds or direct you to a larger institution.
Picking up fossils is also a hands-on way to connect with Earthâs distant past. And hunting for shark teeth offers an
educational, entertaining activity for you or your family.
âMan, I could shoot a whole day on it,â says Jim Cotter, a geologist at the University of Minnesota Morris. As a
researcher of glacial geology, Cotter often comes in contact with Cretaceous deposits and shark teeth and communicates
with the public about sharks.
Hereâs how, in many areas of the country, you can roll up your sleevesâor your pants legsâand find some prehistoric
shark tooth fossils, with a bit of luck.
Southwest Florida
Mazza, of Paleo Discoveries, leads fossil-hunting tours in the Peace River of southwest Florida, roughly an hour east
of Sarasota. Heâll take a group of shark tooth-spotting hopefuls out in canoes, and then theyâll leave the boats and
wade into the water. Using shovels, theyâll dredge up sediment, then sift through it with a floating screen.
âThe Peace River tends to be fairly shallow, and there are beds of phosphate gravel,â Mazza says. âAnd where
phosphate gravel is found, you will find marine fossils.â
Florida used to be entirely underwater during the Eocene and the Age of Dinosaurs. As a result, no dinosaur fossils
have ever been found in the state. But itâs a prime place for fossils of aquatic creatures. The Peace River, for one, is
âreally loadedâ with shark teeth, Mazza adds, from tiger, bull, lemon, gray and snaggletooth sharks to the megalodon.
Individual fossil hunters can bring a sieve or colander to the coast to help sift through sediment. The regionâs acclaimed
sites for fossil hunting include Venice, Florida, which is branded as the âShark Tooth Capital of the World.â Playing
into the fossilsâ appeal to tourists, Venice hosts an annual Sharks Tooth Festiva
l. Other beaches in and around Sarasota
County are also prime shark tooth sites, such as Caspersen Beach.
âFor the larger megalodon teeth, a lot of divers focus on ⊠Venice Beach off the Florida coast, because there were just
more large megalodons living there for a longer period of time,â Mazza says.
Chesapeake Bay
Millions of years ago, parts of the Mid-Atlantic states surrounding the Chesapeake Bay were submerged beneath a
warm, shallow sea. Miocene sharks flocked to the area to feast on aquatic plants and algae, and their fossilized teeth
provide a record of their presence.
One well-known location for fossil hunting is the Calvert Cliffs of Maryland, located in Calvert County. There, shark
teeth can be found along the shore near exposed cliff sides that stand some 100 feet tall beside a narrow beach. As
wind and water erode the cliff face, prehistoric fossils emerge. Today, however, walking near the cliff is off-limits for
safety reasons, but you can access a public beach nearby.
Calvert Cliffs in Maryland WilliamSherman/Getty Images
âThe waves undercut the cliffs, and the cliffs erode, sometimes in very large blocks of many tons,â Mazza says. âAnd
if the cliff gets eroded with a lot of high-water actionâbecause [of] a lot of wind or a stormâit can cause the cliffs to
collapse in blocks, and then the waves break the blocks down, and the fossils will turn up in the surf eventually, or in
the blocks on the beach.â
If you want to try some slightly lesser-known locations, check out sites such as Marylandâs Flag Ponds Nature
Park and Nanjemoy Wildlife Management Area or Virginiaâs Westmoreland State Park. Find a spot along the parksâ
beaches on the Chesapeake Bay or Potomac River and sift through sand at the shoreline or wade out a little bit and look
through the sediment there. Just remember that fossil hunting can take some luck, and it might not always be a fruitful
day.
Atlantic Coast
The Mid-Atlantic isnât the only spot on the East Coast where fossil shark teeth can be foundâthe remains appear across
a large stretch of that shore. âAt certain points, the east side of the U.S. was part of the coastal plain; it was flooded,
because the ocean level was higher,â Mazza says. âIt was globally a warmer time. And when that happens, the ocean
rises. So you can find shark teeth of similar age up and down the East Coast.â
Compared to the Miocene fossils that Mazza finds in Florida, shark teeth along much of the Atlantic Coast tend to be
older. In some states, he says, keen collectors could potentially find teeth from the ancestors of the megalodon.
Many states along the coast have sites where you can find shark teeth. Here, the same guidelines apply: Using a
colander or sieveâor just your handsâsearch through the sediment at the shoreline. Mazza advises looking on the
beach just above where the waves break, or snorkeling or diving offshore. Some fossil hunters look at low tide, others
at high tide. âAll methods work,â Mazza writes in an email.
Along the James River in Virginia, some state parks will lead fossil-related events. North Carolinaâs Outer Banks,
Holden Beach and Topsail Island rank as popular locations to search. In South Carolina, the Charleston area is a
common spot for fossil collecting, with the nearby Folly Beach offering shark teeth. In Georgia, a megalodon tooth is
the state fossil.
âAny one of those areas from any of those states can be a gold mine if you know where to look,â Mazza says.
Central United States
The central U.S. might not seem like a shark tooth hot spotâit doesnât even touch an ocean. But during the Cretaceous
period, North America was cut in half by an inland sea that passed over that region, and varied sharks inhabited it.
Called the Western Interior Seaway, the body of water was formed by plate tectonics. âAs a result, you start to get
uplift in the Westânot yet the Rockies, but beginnings of uplift,â says Cotter, the University of Minnesota Morris
geologist. âAnd as that happens, the West kind of flexes up, and the Midwest flexes down, so you get a lowland.â
Over time, that land became low enough to fall below sea level, and water from the oceans came in on top of it. What
it created was an inland seaâan ocean on top of continental crust, like Canadaâs Hudson Bay of modern times. And
it was home to a variety of large sharks, which date to even longer ago than the fossils on the East Coast.
But searching for teeth in the central states is a much different experience from fossil hunting along the shore. There,
the teeth reveal themselves in interior waterways, natural ridges or places where the ground has been cut through. In
areas where mining has stripped the Earthâs surface, fossil shark teeth can appear. River cuts and ridges along roadsides
are also a prime place to look, Cotter says, where erosion from rain can bring the fossils out from the ground.
In the central U.S., teeth will appear at the surface as Cretaceous shale becomes exposed by weathering. In Minnesota,
that sediment looks like a crumbly, gray, clayey rock. Importantly, you can leave any toolsâsuch as a hammer or
shovelâat home. âDigging will get you nowhere,â Cotter writes in an email. âYou just walk along a road ditch or
river bottom and see what you can find.â
Though collecting in national parks isnât allowed, Cotter suggests looking in areas near Big Bend in Texas, Chaco
Culture National Historical Park in New Mexico, the Grand Canyon in Arizona, Mesa Verde in Colorado or the
Badlands in South Dakota, because these areas have Cretaceous sediment deposits. Potential sites in the region
include Shark Tooth Ridge in New Mexico and Post Oak Creek in North Texas.
In Minnesota, Cotter travels with his college students to Cretaceous sites in the stateâs Iron Range of ore-rich areas that
host Cretaceous sediment where shark teeth can be found. At Traverse County Park in western Minnesota, shark teeth
can appear along the shores of Lake Traverse if the water level is low.
Wherever you go, and no matter what you find, simply looking for shark teeth is a captivating activity. While in the
field with his students, Cotter says their main focus is often Cretaceous or glacial geology. But as soon as he lets slip
that shark teeth could be in the area, his students are immediately drawn into the search.
âKind of offhanded, Iâll say, âOh, and by the way, you find sharkâs teeth around here,ââ he says. âAnd I have to save
that last sentence until the very end, because they wonât listen to whatever I sayâtheyâre looking for shark teeth at that
point. And Iâve completely lost them.â
Click on link below to watch 4:43 minute video on sharks
https://www.msn.com/en-us/weather/t...&cvid=019a78dc69724d3582b994bd86477475&ei=116
Shark teeth are often considered the most common vertebrate fossils in the world, and for good reason. Each individual
shark has rows upon rows of chompers that fall out and get replaced in conveyor belt-like fashion. A single shark can
lose approximately one tooth per week.
Considering the fact that sharks have swum the worldâs seas for more than 400 million years, the animals have left
behind an extensive fossil record. Today, their preserved teeth, which tend to have a dark color, can be found in the
sediments of rivers, along coastlines or even on the side of the road, depending on where you are.
âIf you can find one in one location, you will certainly find more,â says Fred Mazza, president of the fossil tour company
Paleo Discoveries in Florida. âTheyâre not all large, large teeth. A lot of them just naturally fall into a size range from
half an inch to one inch. But theyâre not rare to find at all.â
Teeth are the only widely available record of prehistoric sharks, since the cartilaginous bodies of the predatory fish do
not preserve easily. If scientists want to learn about the sharksâ anatomy, diet or ecology, they have to get clues from
teeth. 1
Sora Kim, a geochemist and shark tooth researcher at the University of California, Merced, studies the chemical
elements in fossilized shark teeth to unravel some of the mysteries about the life history of these animals. Last year,
her team reported a shocking discovery: that the megalodon, the giant extinct shark considered to be the largest fish that
ever lived, may have been warm-blooded like mammals.
Today, more than one-third of shark and ray species are threatened with extinction, largely due to overfishing. But
climate change is another threatâa study published this month found sharks are abandoning stressed coral reefs as
oceans warm.
According to Kim, studying sharks of the past could provide clues to how modern sharks will fare under climate change.
During the Eocene epoch (roughly 33.9 million to 56 million years ago), oceans also warmed, and itâs often used as an
analogue for whatâs happening today. âHow did the sharks cope?â she says. âHow did they make it through mass
extinction events, or climate warming or climate cooling? I think that fossil shark teeth, theyâve recorded all that
information. And weâre just now developing the tools to be able to unlock that box.â
If youâre planning to collect fossil shark teeth, experts recommend keeping a few guidelines in mind. First, donât
collect on private land without permissionânever trespass in order to find fossils. You also canât collect fossils from
national parks without a research permit.
Additionally, Kim urges fossil hunters to consider donating their finds to museums, where they could help spur scientific
discoveries. Having citizen scientists collect teeth can save researchers precious money, time and labor from field
expeditions. And often, in shark tooth research, itâs a bit of a numbers gameâthe more teeth a scientist can examine,
the more information they have to work with, elevating the quality of their data.
A paleontology student displays a tooth from an 8 to 12 million-year-old mako shark that he found in Scotts Valley, California. Paul Chinn/San
Francisco Chronicle via Getty Images
âI think that shark paleoecology is kind of on this cusp of doing all these great things,â Kim says. âWe need to be able
to analyze teethâeither their shape, or their chemistry, or just counting the number of teeth and things like thatâto be
able to get a better sense of what taxa lived where, what they were doing, how they were interacting. And by having
these teeth in private collections, thatâs taking out some of that data.â 2
If you intend to donate your collections, Kim recommends sorting teeth in different jars or boxes based on where they
were found. Contact a local natural history museum or university, which might have a paleontology collection, and it
may have a use for the finds or direct you to a larger institution.
Picking up fossils is also a hands-on way to connect with Earthâs distant past. And hunting for shark teeth offers an
educational, entertaining activity for you or your family.
âMan, I could shoot a whole day on it,â says Jim Cotter, a geologist at the University of Minnesota Morris. As a
researcher of glacial geology, Cotter often comes in contact with Cretaceous deposits and shark teeth and communicates
with the public about sharks.
Hereâs how, in many areas of the country, you can roll up your sleevesâor your pants legsâand find some prehistoric
shark tooth fossils, with a bit of luck.
Southwest Florida
Mazza, of Paleo Discoveries, leads fossil-hunting tours in the Peace River of southwest Florida, roughly an hour east
of Sarasota. Heâll take a group of shark tooth-spotting hopefuls out in canoes, and then theyâll leave the boats and
wade into the water. Using shovels, theyâll dredge up sediment, then sift through it with a floating screen.
âThe Peace River tends to be fairly shallow, and there are beds of phosphate gravel,â Mazza says. âAnd where
phosphate gravel is found, you will find marine fossils.â
Florida used to be entirely underwater during the Eocene and the Age of Dinosaurs. As a result, no dinosaur fossils
have ever been found in the state. But itâs a prime place for fossils of aquatic creatures. The Peace River, for one, is
âreally loadedâ with shark teeth, Mazza adds, from tiger, bull, lemon, gray and snaggletooth sharks to the megalodon.
Individual fossil hunters can bring a sieve or colander to the coast to help sift through sediment. The regionâs acclaimed
sites for fossil hunting include Venice, Florida, which is branded as the âShark Tooth Capital of the World.â Playing
into the fossilsâ appeal to tourists, Venice hosts an annual Sharks Tooth Festiva
l. Other beaches in and around Sarasota
County are also prime shark tooth sites, such as Caspersen Beach.
âFor the larger megalodon teeth, a lot of divers focus on ⊠Venice Beach off the Florida coast, because there were just
more large megalodons living there for a longer period of time,â Mazza says.
Chesapeake Bay
Millions of years ago, parts of the Mid-Atlantic states surrounding the Chesapeake Bay were submerged beneath a
warm, shallow sea. Miocene sharks flocked to the area to feast on aquatic plants and algae, and their fossilized teeth
provide a record of their presence.
One well-known location for fossil hunting is the Calvert Cliffs of Maryland, located in Calvert County. There, shark
teeth can be found along the shore near exposed cliff sides that stand some 100 feet tall beside a narrow beach. As
wind and water erode the cliff face, prehistoric fossils emerge. Today, however, walking near the cliff is off-limits for
safety reasons, but you can access a public beach nearby.
Calvert Cliffs in Maryland WilliamSherman/Getty Images
âThe waves undercut the cliffs, and the cliffs erode, sometimes in very large blocks of many tons,â Mazza says. âAnd
if the cliff gets eroded with a lot of high-water actionâbecause [of] a lot of wind or a stormâit can cause the cliffs to
collapse in blocks, and then the waves break the blocks down, and the fossils will turn up in the surf eventually, or in
the blocks on the beach.â
If you want to try some slightly lesser-known locations, check out sites such as Marylandâs Flag Ponds Nature
Park and Nanjemoy Wildlife Management Area or Virginiaâs Westmoreland State Park. Find a spot along the parksâ
beaches on the Chesapeake Bay or Potomac River and sift through sand at the shoreline or wade out a little bit and look
through the sediment there. Just remember that fossil hunting can take some luck, and it might not always be a fruitful
day.
Atlantic Coast
The Mid-Atlantic isnât the only spot on the East Coast where fossil shark teeth can be foundâthe remains appear across
a large stretch of that shore. âAt certain points, the east side of the U.S. was part of the coastal plain; it was flooded,
because the ocean level was higher,â Mazza says. âIt was globally a warmer time. And when that happens, the ocean
rises. So you can find shark teeth of similar age up and down the East Coast.â
Compared to the Miocene fossils that Mazza finds in Florida, shark teeth along much of the Atlantic Coast tend to be
older. In some states, he says, keen collectors could potentially find teeth from the ancestors of the megalodon.
Many states along the coast have sites where you can find shark teeth. Here, the same guidelines apply: Using a
colander or sieveâor just your handsâsearch through the sediment at the shoreline. Mazza advises looking on the
beach just above where the waves break, or snorkeling or diving offshore. Some fossil hunters look at low tide, others
at high tide. âAll methods work,â Mazza writes in an email.
Along the James River in Virginia, some state parks will lead fossil-related events. North Carolinaâs Outer Banks,
Holden Beach and Topsail Island rank as popular locations to search. In South Carolina, the Charleston area is a
common spot for fossil collecting, with the nearby Folly Beach offering shark teeth. In Georgia, a megalodon tooth is
the state fossil.
âAny one of those areas from any of those states can be a gold mine if you know where to look,â Mazza says.
Central United States
The central U.S. might not seem like a shark tooth hot spotâit doesnât even touch an ocean. But during the Cretaceous
period, North America was cut in half by an inland sea that passed over that region, and varied sharks inhabited it.
Called the Western Interior Seaway, the body of water was formed by plate tectonics. âAs a result, you start to get
uplift in the Westânot yet the Rockies, but beginnings of uplift,â says Cotter, the University of Minnesota Morris
geologist. âAnd as that happens, the West kind of flexes up, and the Midwest flexes down, so you get a lowland.â
Over time, that land became low enough to fall below sea level, and water from the oceans came in on top of it. What
it created was an inland seaâan ocean on top of continental crust, like Canadaâs Hudson Bay of modern times. And
it was home to a variety of large sharks, which date to even longer ago than the fossils on the East Coast.
But searching for teeth in the central states is a much different experience from fossil hunting along the shore. There,
the teeth reveal themselves in interior waterways, natural ridges or places where the ground has been cut through. In
areas where mining has stripped the Earthâs surface, fossil shark teeth can appear. River cuts and ridges along roadsides
are also a prime place to look, Cotter says, where erosion from rain can bring the fossils out from the ground.
In the central U.S., teeth will appear at the surface as Cretaceous shale becomes exposed by weathering. In Minnesota,
that sediment looks like a crumbly, gray, clayey rock. Importantly, you can leave any toolsâsuch as a hammer or
shovelâat home. âDigging will get you nowhere,â Cotter writes in an email. âYou just walk along a road ditch or
river bottom and see what you can find.â
Though collecting in national parks isnât allowed, Cotter suggests looking in areas near Big Bend in Texas, Chaco
Culture National Historical Park in New Mexico, the Grand Canyon in Arizona, Mesa Verde in Colorado or the
Badlands in South Dakota, because these areas have Cretaceous sediment deposits. Potential sites in the region
include Shark Tooth Ridge in New Mexico and Post Oak Creek in North Texas.
In Minnesota, Cotter travels with his college students to Cretaceous sites in the stateâs Iron Range of ore-rich areas that
host Cretaceous sediment where shark teeth can be found. At Traverse County Park in western Minnesota, shark teeth
can appear along the shores of Lake Traverse if the water level is low.
Wherever you go, and no matter what you find, simply looking for shark teeth is a captivating activity. While in the
field with his students, Cotter says their main focus is often Cretaceous or glacial geology. But as soon as he lets slip
that shark teeth could be in the area, his students are immediately drawn into the search.
âKind of offhanded, Iâll say, âOh, and by the way, you find sharkâs teeth around here,ââ he says. âAnd I have to save
that last sentence until the very end, because they wonât listen to whatever I sayâtheyâre looking for shark teeth at that
point. And Iâve completely lost them.â
Click on link below to watch 4:43 minute video on sharks
https://www.msn.com/en-us/weather/t...&cvid=019a78dc69724d3582b994bd86477475&ei=116