‘Massive shark tooth’ found in sand at Cayman Islands linked to extinct megalodon

A giant shark’s tooth popped up in the Cayman Islands and officials there are celebrating the find — in part because the humongous shark is extinct.

The tooth is 4 inches long, the size of a soup can.

“This massive shark tooth — believed to belong to the extinct megalodon ... was found in the sand at a development site in the eastern districts earlier this year,” the islands’ Department of Environment posted on Facebook.

“It was the largest shark to ever prowl the oceans and was the apex predator of the global marine environment for some 13 million years.”

The finder was not identified, but he donated the tooth to the Department of Environment “for further study,” the department posted. Officials told the Cayman Compass that the tooth was discovered by a man who hoped to remain anonymous.

Reaction to the discovery has been a combination of awe and curiosity — and relief the shark is no longer around.

“It’s a tooth...Imagine how huge that soul was!” Susan Cook wrote on Facebook.

“Lucky for us divers that they ARE extinct! With a jaw opening of up to 2 meters they could eat pretty much anything they wanted to,” Bob Hickerson posted on the department’s Facebook page.

“Maybe that earthquake shook some stuff up from the depths,” Shawna Nash McLaughlin wrote.

Megalodon were “one of the largest predators to have ever lived,” not to mention one of the biggest fish, according to the Natural History Museum.

They averaged 6 feet in height and were 50 feet long, though some may have reached 60 feet, based on a 2019 report by Kenshu Shimada, a professor at DePaul University in Chicago.

The apex predators began showing up in the fossil record 20 million years ago and prowled the oceans 13 million years before going extinct, the Natural History Museum reports.

Megalodon teeth of up to 6.5 inches have been found in South Carolina, with the all-time unofficial record being a 7.48-inch tooth reportedly found in Peru, according to FossilEra.com.

This story was originally published February 14, 2020 at 12:06 PM with the headline "‘Massive shark tooth’ found in sand at Cayman Islands linked to extinct megalodon."