9 year old finds 'Meg' shark tooth on Christmas Day beach hunt

A nine-year-old girl got the ultimate Christmas present when she discovered a giant Megalodon shark tooth whilst searching for fossils on Christmas Day.

You could call Molly Sampson, from Maryland, the girl with the prehistoric Megalodon shark tooth, after she made the find in the waters of Chesapeake Bay, using the cold-water waders she had got that Christmas morning so that she keep warm looking for shark teeth and other fossils.

She said: “I saw something big, and it looked like a shark tooth. We were about knee deep in the water.”

The five-inch tooth means that the Megalodon shark it once belonged to is estimated to have been somewhere between 45 and 50 feet long.

Molly’s find has already inspired other children from around the World to write to her, helping to inspire others to discover other such discoveries. And the tooth has only made her even more determined to become a palaeontologist.

Her discovery follows another child finding a Meg tooth last year, this time on a beach in the UK.

And Megalodons are set to hit our screens again this year with The Black Demon and The Meg 2: The Trench surfacing in cinemas, meaning those needing to stop them are likely to need a bigger boat.

All of which means a whole new generation of children and young people are set to fear the monster sharks on film – but ultimately become fascinated with sharks - all over again, just like they were when JAWS was released in 1975.

Words by Dean Newman

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