An Australian Scientist Found A Tooth So Big That It’s Hard To Believe This Monster Actually Existed

on Victoria's surf coast amateur fossil hunter Phillip Mullally is scanning the shore for signs of ancient life then the sunlight catches something jutting out from a nearby rock and soon after Mullally realizes that he's made an incredible discovery he's uncovered the tooth of a beast that stalked Australian waters millions of years before the great white shark in 2015 Mullally was visiting the beach of jean-jacques a suburban town some 65 miles southwest of Melbourne Australia the area is known for its fossil finds so Malaya was keeping his eyes peeled for any such relics and amazingly his walk was interrupted when he found a huge tooth embedded in the coastal rock I was walking along the beach looking for fossils turned and saw this shining glint in a boulder and saw a quarter of the tooth exposed molera explained in a video published by museums of Victoria in August of 2018 I was immediately excited it was just perfect and I knew it was an important fine that needed to be shared with people without any special equipment malayani used a car key to excavate the tooth which turned out to be colossal in fact and around three inches long the fossil was large enough to cover the palm of his hand pleased with his discovery Mullally then returned home just weeks later however he found himself back at John shook and this time Mullally was even luckier in fact he was able to recover a number of further teeth strengthening his conviction that this was something special it dawned on me when I found the second third and fourth tooth that this was a really big deal he told the New York Times in August of 2018 hoping to learn more about his discoveries malayani got in touch with a paleontologist eric Fitzgerald at Melbourne's museums Victoria and soon the expert was able to identify the owner of the giant teeth apparently they had come from the mouth of car Charles and goo students the great jagged narrow tooth shark back in the late Alijah scene era between 30 3.9 million and 23 million years ago these formidable beasts inhabited the Earth's oceans where they fed on creatures such as whales dolphins and fish members of the karcher Ogle's and gusta Dinh species are also thought to have grown to up to 30 feet in length making them almost twice as big as the great white sharks seen off the coast of Australia today and apparently the teeth that Mullally located can be dated to around 25 million years ago some 3 million years then before karcher Ogle's and goo students became extinct eventually the shark was replaced by similar species which in turn paved the way for the emergence of Megalodon the famous mega tooth Sark thought to have been able to grow to a staggering 59 feet but there was something about Malay Lee's fines that made them particularly valuable it seemed that all the teeth that had recovered from jean-jacques had come from a single individual rather than from several sharks that had shed their teeth over a period of time in the past fossil hunters have found single-car Charles and ku students teeth and various places and on different occasions however Malayalees discoveries marked only the third time in history that a Sat belonging to one of the creatures had been unearthed additionally it was the first time that such a fine had been made on Australian shores amazed Fitzgerald wasted no time in acting imal Ali's breakthrough I said to him you realize how important and rare these are the paleontologists were called to the New York Times there could be more there we need to go back down there and dig so with the help of colleague Tim Ziegler but Cheryl began planning a trip to Jean Juke over the course of two expeditions one in December of 2017 the next in January of 2018 Fitzgerald Ziggler and Mullally worked with a team of paleontologists and volunteers at the Victoria beach and despite the challenging conditions created by the tides the group began to excavate the site of the original tooth eventually the team were able to recover more than 40 separate teeth from the beach at John shook they also found the remains of part of a Carter O close and gusta Dan's vertebrae and because each tooth could be traced to a different spot in the jaw Fitz was able to make an educated assumption they all belonged to the same animal clearly the contents of its jaw would have made Carter Ogle's and GU students a fearsome predator a creature at the top of the food chain in Australia's elijah's II and oceans the teeth were finely serrated and sharper than steak knives Fitzgerald explained during the New York Times interview they're still sharp even 25 million years later interestingly though the team didn't just find car trocols and GU students teeth buried in the rock apparently they uncovered a number belonging to a different smaller species of shark these six kill a scavenger that still patrols Australian waters moreover these teeth appeared to have come from as many as six individual sharks amazingly this discovery has since enabled researchers to put together a convincing picture of what might have happened to one particular member of the car Charles and GU stood in species millions of years ago after the shark's death they reasoned it's gigantic carcass floated to the bottom of the sea where the six kills feasted on the larger predators corpse the teeth of the sixgill shark worked like a crosscut saw and tore into the car Charles and GU students like loggers felling a tree Ziegler explained in an August 28 statement from museums Victoria the stench of blood and decaying flesh would have drawn scavengers from far around some proposed a different answer to the question of how the six Gill teeth ended up mixed in with the karcher oh close and goo students remains specifically the larger creature had actually preyed upon and eaten the scavengers however researchers could find no evidence that the smaller shark's teeth had been digested then on August 9th 2018 museums Victoria released a statement confirming the details of the incredible finds and inviting the public to view the entire set of teeth at an exhibition at Melbourne Museum there are the teeth took center stage during the Australian attractions celebrations for National Science Week now Fitzgerald hopes his team can further investigate car trocols and goo students and the factors that have caused its extinction he even believes there could be more discoveries waiting to be unearthed as Jean Chu will be waiting and ready for the next expedition down to salvage a giant prehistoric shark he told CNN in August of 2018 check out these other videos from let me know if you haven't made the move to subscribe to our channel all you need to do is click on that red subscribe button thank you for watching

Channel: Let Me Know

Views: 1,191,131

Rating: 4.2965903 out of 5

Keywords: Australia, Carcharocles angustidens, Erich Fitzgerald, fossil, Great white shark, Jan Juc, mega shark, megalodon, Melbourne Museum, Museums Victoria, Oligocene, paleontology, Philip Mullaly, sixgill shark, Surf Coast, Tim Ziegler, victoria, Archaeology

Id: 3gDtuwF3_fM

Length: 7min 2sec (422 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 25 2018