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Largest Megalodon Tooth Ever Found ?


tmann

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That's not the best photo evidence for the largest tooth documented. If the tooth is set even just a little higher than the ruler, you get an optical illusion of a larger tooth. Multiple views would have been better. If you put calipers on it, it would be more convincing.

It would be interesting to get the observations of several people like Dr. Gordon Hubbell or other scientists along with a mix of dealers and collectors to see what is said.

The tooth has a caliper measurement of 7.48" inches. The reason why a photo with the caliper measurement is not available is the tooth was measured, molded and photographed back in the 90's by Craig Sundell, a researcher associated the the University of Kansas and who was working with the National Museum in Peru at the time. He didn't have access to digital calipers at the time, hence the crude use of a tape measure in the photo. The tooth has remained in a private collection in Peru. It has since been measured precisely to be 190mm (7.48"), though I'm not clear if that precise measurement using calipers was done on the original tooth, or on a replica from the molds he brought back to the US.

Edited by Olenoides
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  • 4 weeks later...

You'll have to pardon my skepticism, sir. I've been collecting fossil shark teeth for years (as in not quite three decades) and have heard all kinds of claims of the "largest ever" and that's with me not always in the loop to hear the latest. You have to understand that with the ones talking about teeth larger than 7 1/4" there was always a reason why clear photos from straight angles couldn't be taken. There was always an excuse why they couldn't be examined by an objective observer. I have seen the Peruvian tooth that was at Black Hills Institute. I saw Mark Havenstein's tooth he had one display at Tucson a couple of years ago. Those two were measured around 7 1/4 inches. I've seen only a couple of broken/worn teeth that appeared to be at or very near 7 inches. There have also been teeth that gained a half-inch or so from artfully applied and painted putty.

If you've seen the tooth or believe a witness you deem reliable, I'm not going to say you're wrong or that it's impossible, but in my own opinion, irrefutable evidence has yet to be presented. It doesn't sound like a lot but when you talk about meg teeth over 7 inches, every sixteenth of an inch after that becomes its own level of extreme rarity. That's why you hardly ever hear about them being found. I would be less skeptical if there were a couple of 7.35 or 7.4 inch teeth out there but the jump from a hair's breadth of 7.25 to 7.48 seems quite unlikely. Maybe a mathematician could explain it better.

The tooth has a caliper measurement of 7.48" inches. The reason why a photo with the caliper measurement is not available is the tooth was measured, molded and photographed back in the 90's by Craig Sundell, a researcher associated the the University of Kansas and who was working with the National Museum in Peru at the time. He didn't have access to digital calipers at the time, hence the crude use of a tape measure in the photo. The tooth has remained in a private collection in Peru. It has since been measured precisely to be 190mm (7.48"), though I'm not clear if that precise measurement using calipers was done on the original tooth, or on a replica from the molds he brought back to the US.

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  • 4 months later...

Largest I've seen is 7-1/8" (unrestored) and sadly the largest I own is only 6-1/2" (Peruvian)

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I'm not a shark tooth collector so I was wondering if people differentiate between the size of a tooth with the root and just the size of the crown itself. It seems the root can really skew the size of the tooth. Does the largest shark tooth in the world also have the largest crown in the world? If not, what is the largest shark tooth crown on record?

Edited by Dracorex_hogwartsia
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  • 4 years later...

The paleontologists usually doubt the statistical likelihood that an 8 inch megalodon tooth could exist because we have already found such a large sample size of megalodon teeth from all over the earth and such a tiny percentage of those teeth exceed seven inches in diagonal overall length. If this sample set of teeth were distributed into a bell shaped distribution curve then teeth exceeding seven inches would be many, many standard deviations from the norm. Thus they fairly say that an 8 inch tooth is statistically nearly impossible except as a rare mutant form suffering from acromegaly or gigantism perhaps?

 

However, what they have failed to recognize is the possibility that our entire sample size of fossil megalodon teeth is primarily derived from relatively shallow and near-shore environments. Perhaps extremely large sharks or even a subspecies of sharks could have adapted to a deeper water environment where larger size could have provided some adaptive evolutionary benefit. Therefore, despite our robust statistical model we could still have an incomplete knowledge of a maximum size range for this and other similar fossil species.  What percentage of our total megalodon tooth sample size is derived from deep or extremely deep oceanic environments? We have already seen some evidence of this from Peru with nearly 7.5 inch specimens. 

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Another point worth mentioning is that we may have effectively already found evidence of a megalodon shark which had 8 inch teeth. If we take the 7.48 inch specimen from Peru and its deep water oceanic paleo-environment as an example, then what degree of tooth size variation exists within the dentition of a single shark? If it is 5 percent or 8 percent then we multiply that by 7.48 inches what would be the result? At five percent variation I calculated approximately  7.85 inches total diagonal length. At eight percent variation it was 8.07 inches. So then paleontologist experts what exactly is that percent variation?

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My point in posing these hypothetical questions was not to question the excellent science being accomplished by our paleontologists but rather to question complacency in too readily believing that we have derived a complete knowledge of any scientific knowledge which more often is later found to be more partial. 

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a well put point @tipsycat, maybe some other experts would know better, but from my limited understanding, megs normally occur in shallower waters, correct me if im wrong, but there must be deeper plio/miocene deep water derived sediments somewhere, anyway im not an expert, just interested:)

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On 12/20/2020 at 9:44 AM, tipsycat said:

So then paleontologist experts what exactly is that percent variation?

 

To know the % variation means nothing in determining what the largest tooth could be since for any individual tooth, we have no way to determine where it fits on a scale from small to large. Extrapolation requires knowing the variation AND knowing where the individual tooth fits on the size spectrum. Assume a 10% variation and a 7.5 inch tooth. Is that tooth at the upper end of the variation, leaving one with a maximum of a 7.5 inch tooth possible. Or if is it on the lower end of the size variation, then (7.5x 1.10) would leave the possibility of a 8.25 inch tooth. We will never know.

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On 12/19/2020 at 5:30 PM, tipsycat said:

However, what they have failed to recognize is the possibility that our entire sample size of fossil megalodon teeth is primarily derived from relatively shallow and near-shore environments. Perhaps extremely large sharks or even a subspecies of sharks could have adapted to a deeper water environment where larger size could have provided some adaptive evolutionary benefit. Therefore, despite our robust statistical model we could still have an incomplete knowledge of a maximum size range for this and other similar fossil species.  What percentage of our total megalodon tooth sample size is derived from deep or extremely deep oceanic environments? We have already seen some evidence of this from Peru with nearly 7.5 inch specimens. 

 

What you need to consider is that "relatively shallow and near-shore environments" are the heavy traffic areas.  That's where almost all the food is.  Deepwater animals tend to be small and the larger ones tend to be slow-moving to conserve energy because food is scarce.  When scientists take cameras and submersibles down to the bottom of the ocean, they find a lot of bare surface with rare "whalefalls" found - carcasses of whales slowly being scavenged.  They don't find chopped bones to indicate a bite radius twice the size of a large great white.  They don't find 8-inch teeth sticking out of the bottom.  They do see large sharks on the bottom but they are no larger than any from the sunlit zone.  Greenland sharks and sixgill sharks can reach twenty feet like a great white but nothing larger than that has been seen.  Could there be 25-30 foot sharks down there?  Yes, but it would be great to see just one or the partial carcass of one to indicate that they are down there.  Could there have been megalodon individuals large enough to have 8-inch teeth?  Yes, but it would be great to find most of a tooth that would have been close to that.  

 

Otherwise, it's all speculation.  It's like all that Bigfoot talk about "just because we haven't found one Sasquatch doesn't mean a bunch of them haven't existed."  After all these years, you'd think someone would have found one carcass or just a few bones.  It's always just some weird call in the night, a broken branch and a vague footprint.

 

Jess

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  • 4 weeks later...

I wonder if this is true that the most food is found in shallow, nearshore environments?  I was under the impression that sperm whales have been recorded diving very deep to feed upon giant squid and other deeper water species and that offshore environments can offer a rich food supply.
 

I know that the Bone Valley region in Florida and the Chandler Bridge Formation near Summerville and Ladson, SC are both thought to have been shallow, estaurine areas during the Miocene and Oligocene periods respectively where larger female sharks came to give birth and perhaps guard newborn sharks in areas with an ample food supply of smaller marine mammals and other food.  These regions both have a skewed distribution of smaller Megalodon and Angustidens teeth within a given sample set, and large teeth from mature sharks are much less common.


The mature sharks were thought to live more offshore and thought to have preyed upon small to middle sized whales and larger fish and other food sources. Great white sharks today have been tracked moving thousands of miles about the oceans and have also been known to dive deep pursuing prey.  
 

I am theorizing that the very largest megalodon sharks in the 16 meter or possibly larger size range would have been apex predators capable of attacking large whales and may have followed pods of whales.  Analagous to lions hunting water buffalo, they would have targeted weaker slower whales or young whales.  This could have brought mature megalodon sharks into deeper waters and some of their prey may not have only been near the surface. Megalodon shark teeth have been found in deep sediment layers from the bottom of the oceans.  
 

It is relatively rare that enough geological uplift or change has occurred to expose such layers or bring them into areas where most of our fossil hunting occurs.  Most of the fossil layers commonly hunted are sedimentary layers exposed since relatively recent transgressions of the oceans onto the continental shelf regions of the earth’s landmasses.

 

Thus, I argue that our knowledge may remain incomplete regarding the life cycle and size range of the largest, most mature Otodus / Carcharocles chronospecies of apex predatory sharks.  

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