9-Year-Old Girl Finds Shark Tooth From 15 Million Years Ago

A youth paleontologist, who despite being more than half a decade away from legally operating a motor vehicle, made a more impressive discovery than most people with advanced paleontology degrees ever will: a 15 million-year-old tooth belonging to a prehistoric shark.

According to WJLA, 9-year-old Molly Sampson was cruising along Maryland's Calvert County Cliffs during low tide and came across the massive tooth.

“I couldn’t believe it, it was so exciting," she said. “I usually find little ones, I never thought I would find a big one like that."

Young Molly is such an avid shark tooth hunter that she asked for a set of waders for Christmas. That turned out to be a good call, as her Christmas waders helped her find the 15 million-year-old megalodon tooth.

An artist's rendering of a megalodon next to a modern-day great white shark.

A Giant Tooth For A Giant Shark

If you're unfamiliar with a megalodon (then clearly you're not a Shark Week watcher), it was a prehistoric shark that made the shark from Jaws look like bait. They could grow to 25 meters (82 feet) long. Just look at the size of this tooth and imagine it sawing through a giant squid or whatever unholy monsters were swimming around back then.

“We were looking around and I looked over and saw something big that far away from me," Molly said. "I tried scooping it up but I couldn’t because it was so big and I reached down and I was screeching."

She took her to find to a nearby museum. There, they verified what it was and took a stab at how old the fossilized too might be.

“Based on where she found it on Calvert cliff, we estimate that it’s about 15 million years old,” Stephen Godfrey, the Curator of Paleontology at the Calvert Marine Museum, said, per WJLA.

Sampson picked up shark tooth hunting from her old man. She now has household bragging rights after finding one heck of a specimen.

“My biggest one is three inches and I found that one walking on the beach with my mom," her pops said. You just need to look a bit harder, dad. Maybe take some pointers from your kid.

Congratulations to Molly, and here's to some more discoveries in the future!

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