11-year old beachcomber finds several megalodon teeth that could be 30 million years old
By Lorne Chambers | Editor
A couple weeks ago, 11-year-old Brooklyn Putnam was visiting Folly Beach from Summerville along with her mother, father, and older brother, when she saw something sticking out of the sand down around third block on the East side. Turns out it was a sharks tooth. But it wasn’t like the tiny shark tooth she found in the past. This was a large fossilized tooth of a megalodon, an extinct species of shark that lived millions of years ago during the Cenozoic Era. This was way better. It was even better than the time she found nearly 70 sand dollars in one day.
The Putnam family will soon be leaving South Carolina and moving to Florida, so Brooklyn wanted to collect shells from the local beaches to help remember where she’s from. So when she found the giant megalodon tooth, she was just looking for pretty shells to put in a jar.
The tooth would have been a pretty precious find, even for a seasoned experienced sharks tooth hunter, but Brooklyn was just getting started.
“I was happy when I found the first one because it looked nothing like the one I found before,” said Brooklyn. “Then I kept finding more.”
In the end, Brooklyn found 19 large fossilized sharks’ teeth, some broken in half, but others in pretty close to pristine condition … for something that is literally millions of years old.
Brooklyn’s mother, Alissa, says after a while people started gathering around the young beachcomber, not believing what she was pulling out of the sand. “We just sat there and she kept on bringing them up and I was laying them out on the towel,” says Alissa. “Pretty soon there were three guys and a lady from Illinois tailing her, trying to find out her secret.”
Eventually the hunt ended and they walked up to the tackle shop on the Edwin S. Taylor Folly Beach Fishing Pier and showed the employees their find to see if they knew how old the teeth might be. “They didn’t believe she found them right down there in the sand,” said Alissa.
“One guy’s expression was priceless,” said Brooklyn laughing at their reaction.
Jordy Taylor, a graduate student in the College of Charleston’s Marine Biology department can understand Brooklyn’s excitement over her big score.
“I grew up in Charleston collecting fossils from all over when … I have always loved fossils and my favorite were always sharks’ teeth. The thrill of the hunt, ya’ know?” says Taylor. “When I was younger, I went on weekly fossil hunts with a retired paleontologist who taught me about the Summerville stratigraphy and the fossils that I found. It became a passion and research focus, since falling in love with it at a young age … So my thesis stemmed off my passion for fossils.”
Taylor’s thesis is on identifying shark teeth by using shapes. He uses a mathematical approach — geometric morphometrics to identify them. “Sort of how you would use linear measurement and angles to differentiate between triangles, squares, rectangular, etc.,” he tries to explain in layman’s terms. Taylor will defend his thesis this April.
According to Taylor, many of Brooklyn’s teeth are indeed Megalodon teeth from the Oligocene time epoch, around 30 to 18 million years ago, from a shark where the max length was about 65 feet. “They say for about every inch of tooth equates to about 10 foot of shark. So if you have a 3-inch tooth that would equal a 30 foot shark,” says Taylor. “There’s also an extinct mako tooth in there as well, and some smaller Carcharhinds (requiem sharks).”
While your average beach going is unlikely to stumble upon this many teeth of this size, Taylor said it’s not unheard of on Folly Beach, typically during the high tides, when new material gets washed-up to find some like this, especially after a storm or hurricane. To find them in a cluster or in a small general area isn’t necessarily that uncommon, he says, because teeth get caught up on rocks and other items that get congregated together.
“If you find a complete megalodon in good condition, they can be of high value. Some 5-inch megalodon teeth in flawless condition can sell up to $750,” says Taylor.
But Brooklyn isn’t interested in cashing in on her find. Like the seashells she set out to find, the teeth are just keepsakes of her time living along the South Carolina coast.
