An eight-year-old boy made the “find of a lifetime” while on a fossil digging tour during a family vacation in South Carolina.
Riley Moore of Pennsylvania recently discovered a 4.75″ angustiden fossilized tooth, from a giant prehistoric shark, at the Palmetto Fossil Excursions facility in Summerville, located approximately 25 miles east of Charleston.
Palmetto Fossil Excursions applauded Riley’s discovery in a Facebook post on August 11:
CONGRATULATIONS!!!!!!! This young man just scored a 4.75″ Angustiden tooth in our Premium Gravel Layer piles on a dry dig!!! Just to give perspective – Any Angustiden over 4″ is the equivalent of finding a 6″ Meg, and an Angustiden at 4.75″ is the equivalent of finding a 6.5″ Megalodon tooth!! Again, congratulations kiddo! Truly the find of a lifetime!!!
An angustiden is an extinct shark species dating back almost 22 million to 33 million years ago and is believed to be closely related to another extinct supersized megatooth shark, otherwise known as the megalodon, according to mindat.org.
Megalodon sharks reached sizes up to 60 feet in length and weighed up to 75 tons — approximately as much as 30 great white sharks, according to National Geographic.
Although not quite as big as the megalodon, angustidens could reach sizes of up to approximately 30 feet long. For context, large great white sharks reach lengths of up to 20 feet long.
Riley’s father, Justin Gracely, was ecstatic about his son’s discovery.
Riley “was walking around the bases of these piles of gravel and dirt and noticed what he thought was the edge of a tooth,” Gracely told Fox News. “When he pulled it out, he was so excited.”
“We are so proud of Riley,” he added.
The Gracely family is from Lebanon, Pennsylvania, and was vacationing in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, at the time. The family noted to Fox News that this was the third year in a row they made the nearly two and half hour trip from Myrtle Beach to the Palmetto Fossil Excursions facility.
Palmetto Fossil Excursions offers visitors excursion tours for a chance to discover prehistoric fossils at the facility’s dry dig site.
Oligocene fossils are among some of the most abundant marine fossils in Coastal South Carolina – Check out these two Angustidens shark teeth recovered from a dry dig at our Lightning Site #fossils #charlestonsc #Discovery #Explore #Adventure #SouthCarolina #Sharkteeth #Science pic.twitter.com/mOSR9621Ny
— Palmetto Fossil Excursions (@PaleoPalmetto) May 2, 2022
You can follow Ethan Letkeman on Twitter at @EthanLetkeman.
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