A Shark Tooth Treasure Hunt

A Shark Tooth Treasure Hunt Millions Of Years In The Making

I was thinking, as it would have been so appropriate, about putting an audio sound-byte at the beginning of this post and cueing the theme music to “Jaws”. Do you remember the famous line from that same film? “We’re going to need a bigger boat”. Well read on, and you’re going to think as I did, “We’re going to need a much, much, much bigger boat, and even that might not suffice”. Taking my young daughter on this adventure was fantastic. Finding the “treasure” we were seeking, or not, didn’t really matter, it was the “thrill of the chase” as they say.

Virginia, where we reside, is rich in history. Head back in time some 415 years and it was here in 1607, that the very first settlers from England arrived to settle the lands we have all learned as Jamestown. Right down the street here in Virginia Beach, on April 26, 1607, 100 English settlers landed here and established the first elective government in English America before pushing up the James River to establish Jamestown. Check out our post on “First Landing State Park” for that awesome adventure. But for this adventure, we are going back far beyond 415 years. We’re going to travel way back in time, millions of years ago.

Approximately 15 million years ago, much of the land we now call Virginia, was completely underwater – water that was teeming with incredible, and in many ways, quite scary ocean creatures. One of the most frightening, if not THE most frightening was none other than the Megalodon. Yes, Virginia was home to the infamous Meg, the largest predatory shark of all time. Our state has a fantastic fossil record of Megalodon, with countless fossilized teeth that have been found in the eastern half of Virginia. Teeth, I must mention, that have been greater than seven inches in length. So, yes, Virginia is one of the greatest places to head out on a treasure hunt adventure to find some prized shark teeth. Also, Megalodon was far from the only shark in the area – there are at least 14 species that have been identified and called modern-day Virginia home…That’s a lot of teeth!

This extinct species (Carcharocles Megalodon) is estimated to possess a body length in the range of 45 to 70 feet with a weight tipping 100 tons. It’s literally the size of a swimming school bus. They’ve been credited with having the most powerful bite in history, able to easily crush the skull of a whale. And as avid predatory hunters, when attacking larger prey, it’s thought, they likely tore off the victim’s fins first, immobilizing their meal before taking a deadly crunch.

Based on conducted studies of Megalodon’s fossil teeth, most researchers have concluded that they were relatives of the modern great white shark (Carcharodon Carcharias), which is the largest species of predatory shark today. But for size comparison, about 20 feet is the longest confirmed length of a great white – up to three times smaller, than Megalodon.

So why is it that Virginia is the hot spot for shark tooth hunting? We get the specifics from Fred Farris, the former Deputy Director of The Virginia Living Museum in Newport News, Virginia. “When the supercontinent Pangaea formed almost 300 million years ago, the East Coast and Africa were pressed together, creating the Blue Ridge Mountains”, Farris said. “As the continents moved apart, lakes formed and seawater filled eastern Virginia, becoming part of the Atlantic Ocean. For most of its history, the entire region was underwater — a warm, shallow coral reef only 50 to 100 feet deep”.

From 30 million years up to about 3 million years ago, these waters were home to the famed species. Megalodon reigned from the early Miocene Epoch (nearly 30 million years ago) to the Late Pliocene Epoch (about 2.6 million years ago). Some say that climate change could have played a role in Megalodon’s extinction, but a newer idea is that its food supply diminished – in part amid competition from other marine predators, such as early ancestors of killer whales. Farris stated that “Megalodons needed warmer waters and the earth was cooling. Upon their demise, sediment covered their remains. Teeth – the shark’s hardest part – hung around long enough to become fossilized”, hence, why we are lucky enough to find them today.

How hard is it to find shark teeth? Well considering sharks continually shed their teeth and in a lifespan will lose approximately 35,000 – 50,000 teeth, continuously replacing those that fall out – your odds are pretty good. There are four basic types of shark teeth: dense flattened, needle-like, pointed lower with triangular upper, and non-functional. Megalodon had approximately 280 sharp chompers at any given time, up to 7 inches long, deployed in six rows, constantly being shed and replaced. So there are a lot of teeth out there to be found.

Megalodon fossil teeth have been found on every continent except Antarctica, making them what is called a “Cosmopolitan Species”. But among everyday fossil collectors, Megalodon teeth are prized, instantly recognizable for exactly what they were: “the lethal tools of a monster-size eating machine”.

Farris states, “the best place to find them is where a river has eroded through the earth and exposed a bank”. Nancy Heltman, the Visitor Services Director for Virginia State Parks says three state parks in Virginia are key spots to find Megalodon teeth, “Chippokes Plantation” in Surry, “York River” in Williamsburg, and “Westmoreland” on Virginia’s Northern Neck. Visitors there are allowed to take home the fossils they find, including shark teeth – as long as they don’t dig down to find them. Westmoreland doesn’t have a limit, while the others ask that you take only one, Heltman said. “We emphasize that you don’t need to be greedy,” she said.

So cue that “Jaws” theme song, grab the sifters*, load the car (no bigger boat needed), and take off on a fun and exciting trip that the entire family will enjoy. It is truly exciting trying to find shark teeth. One of the interesting aspects of this entire subject is the fact that you too might live in an area that was also an ocean at one time. Where you drive your car or take a stroll, in our past, that very location used to be a spectacular, vibrant coral reef. Who would have suspected that far inland in the state of Virginia you could stand where the Atlantic Ocean once was? Standing there watching eagles soar, butterflies flutter, and the leaves dance in the trees, millions of years ago, monster sharks gracefully swam as lethal predators at the top of the food chain.

* We purchased our plastic sifters from the dollar store and they worked great.

* The rest of the trip, other than a bit of gas in the vehicle, was totally free.