An amateur fossil finder from Australia accidentally discovered something, while walking on a local beach, where he suddenly noticed a strangely shaped object that was glimmering in a boulder. Later he found that it belonged to a prehistoric sea animal and donated his remarkable discovery to the Melbourne Museum.
As reported by Museums Victoria Philip Mullaly, the founder was walking along Jan Juc, which is a renowned fossil site in Victoria's Surf Coast in South Australia. When he spotted that strange object, he went for the further investigation and finally came to know that those were a pair of ferocious-looking teeth of an ancient mega shark.
He said, "I was walking along the beach looking for fossils, turned and saw this shining glint in a boulder and saw a quarter of the tooth exposed. I was immediately excited, it was just perfect, and I knew it was an important find that needed to be shared with people."
Further research revealed that the teeth are almost 3 inches in length and it belonged to a long-lost sea creature called the great jagged narrow-toothed shark or Carcharocles angustidens in Latin. This member of the prehistoric shark family used to grow more than 30 feet in length and used to hunt small whales at that area almost 25-million-years ago.
"I was in a bit of shock actually because I saw it and I thought this is looking like it's complete like it's just fallen out of a shark's mouth even though it's 25 million years old," the founder said, Yahoo 7 News reported.
After the first discovery Mullaly took initiative to explore the same area again and from December 2017 to January 2018 his team of explorers found more than 40 teeth. Later, the research team claimed that among all these findings there are some teeth that belonged to the same marine predator.
On the other hand, Tim Ziegler the palaeontologist at Museums Victoria said that some of these teeth came from the smaller sixgill shark, which is also known as Hexanchus, who are still swimming under the water near Victoria in this 21st century.
He added that the teeth of Hexanchus, "work like a crosscut saw, and tore into the Carcharocles angustidens like loggers felling a tree. The stench of blood and decaying flesh would have drawn scavengers from far around."
Smithsonian.com reported that these ancient shark teeth have helped the researchers to look into the physical structure of those marine giants, whose bodies were largely made of cartilage.
The senior curator of vertebrate palaeontology at Museums Victoria, Erich Fitzgerald said that these teeth have their own significance "as they represent one of just three associated groupings of Carcharocles angustidens teeth in the world, and the very first set to ever be discovered in Australia."
