While it’s not massively rare to find a megalodon tooth (sharks can shed up to 40,000 teeth in a lifetime), it’s fairly uncommon to find one as big and intact as the Bowers did.
Plus, finds like this are said to be usually made in coastal waters in the Southeast of the US, rather than the Northeast.
Having gone extinct millions of years ago, the whopper shark was widely popularised by big old scary monster movies given its, well, whopping size.
The megalodon shark weighed in as much as 30 large great white sharks and would reach lengths of up to 60 feet as they ruled the seas from about 17 million years ago.
The only marine animal to ever outweigh it is the blue whale.
Paleontologists have estimated that the absolute mega animal needed to devour 2,500 pounds of food a day (putting this in simple terms, it would be like eating 3,300 cans of tuna).
As for their teeth, they had plenty of them. They would constantly shed teeth, explaining why scientists (and families like the Bowers) have found hundreds of megalodon teeth in oceans and on beaches all over the world.
