A schoolgirl was shocked when she found a tooth which once belonged to the biggest shark to ever stalk the Earth’s oceans, 20 million years ago.
Cydney Root, 12, was searching a beach for fossils in Walton-on-the-Naze, Essex, when she found a tooth as large as her hand.
Her aunt, Sophie Freestone, quickly identified it as once belonging to a megalodon, which ruled the Earth’s seas in prehistoric times.
Sophie, 29, said: “We’ve always hunted for shark teeth, we’ve got jars of them and we were saying that day how amazing it would be to find a meg tooth, and we found one.
“The day before there was a massive cliff-fall, so we went down the next day and it was just in front of the cliff – it was just sitting there on the surface.
“It was my niece Cydney that found it. Her eyes were down looking and then she picked it up to show me.
“She was like ‘Sophie, what’s this?’ And I was like ‘oh my god, it’s a meg tooth!’”
Megaladons grew to around 18 metres in length and their jaws – which could have swallowed two adult humans at once – were lined with 276 deadly teeth.
According to the Natural History Museum, their bite had around 180,000 Newtons of crushing power – ten times that of a great white.
The prehistoric predator was depicted in 2018 monster flick The Meg and its upcoming sequel.
Sophie, who lives in Walton-on-the-Naze, added: “They were bigger than whales, I think they used to eat whales and I know they used to eat great whites.
“It goes to show that there were megs floating around here.
This is the first one we’ve found in the family, we were really shocked and amazed; really happy and excited.
“I was glad I was with her and I’m really proud that she found it.
“But I was slightly jealous, I’m not gonna lie – she beat me to it!”
Cydney now plans to frame the tooth on her wall.
The megalodon appeared in the world’s oceans some 20 million years ago, and went extinct roughly 3.6 million years ago.
Emma Bernard of the Natural History Museum said megalodon teeth were “extremely rare” in the UK, but named Walton-on-the-Naze as one place to look.
She said they are more commonly found in the south-eastern United States, Morocco and Australia.
