A middle school girl stumbled upon a buried treasure while spending her spring break on a beach in North Carolina.
Avery Fauth and her family love to scour the sand for shark teeth whenever they’re on a beach. But Fauth attributes her recent prehistoric find — a megalodon shark tooth — on North Topsail Beach to luck.
“I’m looking around and I see something buried in the sand,” she told WECT. “I uncovered it and it keeps coming and it’s this big tooth and then I hold it up and I’m screaming for my mom.”
Fauth’s dad got the family interested in searching for shark teeth.
“I was pretty surprised [that she found one],” he told the news station. “I’ve been looking for 25 years and I haven’t found anything.”
“I was really shocked and excited for her that she found something that big,” he added.
Fauth was also surprised by the find.
“I was just like, ‘Is this a dream?’ because I didn’t believe I found it,” she said. “They’re really rare to find and they’re some pretty big teeth and they’re pretty cool.”
The megalodon, considered one of, if not the largest marine predator to ever live, had enormous teeth — some approaching nearly 8 inches in length. According to a study published in March, the giant shark spent millions of years sharpening its teeth to become a better predator.
Another recent study, published in February, suggests the megalodon died off around 3.6 million years ago, roughly 1 million years sooner than initially thought. That study also hypothesized that competition from the great white shark contributed to the megalodon’s extinction.