Overview
- A Pennsylvania father and his 11‑year‑old son discovered a large fossilized tooth stuck in a jetty at Sea Isle City while searching for shells in early August, and they took it to local experts for study.
- Specialists at the Cape May Whale Watch and Research Center and the New Jersey State Museum authenticated the specimen as a genuine megalodon tooth.
- The fossil measures about the length of the boy’s hand, roughly 10 centimeters, and is attributed to the extinct megalodon that lived about 3.6 million years ago.
- Researchers say the tooth is rare for New Jersey because suitable Miocene–Pliocene sediments are seldom exposed there, and they link its appearance to a July U.S. Army Corps of Engineers sand‑replenishment dredge that moved offshore material onshore.
- The Bowers family were permitted to keep the tooth after authentication, a find experts called once‑in‑a‑lifetime that highlights how coastal engineering can bring deep or offshore fossils into reach of beachgoers and museums.