Shark Tooth

Georgia designated the shark tooth as its official state fossil in 1976. The designation covers shark teeth broadly, but the most iconic are the thick, triangular teeth of Carcharocles megalodon, the largest predatory fish ever to live. Georgia's Coastal Plain was once shallow ocean floor, and megalodon teeth erode from its riverbanks and wash onto beaches every year.

A single megalodon tooth can be up to seven inches long and weigh several pounds. Finding one in a Georgia riverbed is the most direct way most people will ever hold a fossil that is 5 to 15 million years old.

Carcharocles megalodon was the largest predatory shark in the fossil record. Current estimates put adults at roughly 40 to 60 feet in length. A modern great white shark reaches about 20 feet at most. Megalodon's jaws could open wide enough to engulf a small car, and its teeth were serrated triangles up to 7 inches long.

Megalodon was a predator of large marine mammals, including whales, dolphins, and sea turtles. Fossil whale bones with deep parallel gouges matching megalodon teeth confirm this diet. The shark lived from roughly 23 million to 3.6 million years ago, spanning the late Oligocene through the Pliocene epoch.

The leading theory for its extinction links the shark's decline to cooling oceans and the collapse of the whale populations it depended on for food.

Georgia schoolchildren pushed for an official state fossil in the mid-1970s, and the shark tooth was the clear choice. Megalodon teeth turn up across the state in rivers, on beaches, and in construction sites, making them the most widely found and recognized fossil in Georgia.

The Georgia General Assembly adopted the shark tooth as the state fossil in 1976. The designation acknowledged both the abundance of teeth in the state and the fact that any Georgia child had a realistic shot at finding one.

The Altamaha River system in southeast Georgia is among the most productive shark tooth hunting grounds in the state. Miocene and Pliocene marine sediments underlie much of the Georgia Coastal Plain, and the Altamaha cuts through these layers, exposing teeth that wash onto gravel bars and sandbars after heavy rain.

Shark teeth also wash up on Georgia's barrier island beaches, particularly around Cumberland Island and Jekyll Island, where wave action erodes coastal bluffs. Skidaway Island near Savannah has a documented Miocene fossil layer and is a known site for educational fossil collecting.

Georgia's rivers yield teeth from multiple shark species and geological periods, including Cretaceous-age teeth from older formations deeper in the Coastal Plain. Any stretch of the lower Coastal Plain rivers can produce teeth after a strong current.