Morehead City diver finds 5.8 inch megalodon tooth

CARTERET COUNTY, N.C. (WITN) - It’s not uncommon for divers to find shark teeth, but a 5.8 inch megalodon tooth is a different story.

“I was like thank you lord! Man, I’m like down there losing my mind. Nobody around me but the first to see it, but yeah, it was incredible,” scuba instructor Christian Corbitt said.

Corbitt is a professional scuba instructor who lives in Morehead City, but he decided to try out fossil hunting a few months ago and now he’s hooked.

“It’s just incredible. I mean, you’re holding a piece of history, a piece of a fossilized animal that no longer exists,” Corbitt said.

It was day two of fossil hunting off the Wilmington coast when Corbitt dove into the ocean to see what was below.

“I’m swimming along the line, we lay a line across the bottom so that we can navigate back to where we’re finding teeth. The line lays perfectly over the tooth, like the most strangest place to find it, it was like destiny,” Corbitt said.

Megalodons were the largest sharks to swim the oceans that lived between six to 23 million years ago. Their sizes ranged anywhere from 50 to 60 feet. They also weighed a lot: “Around 50 tons, which is equivalent to a about seven adult African elephants. So this was a big-big thing, a humongous shark,” Aurora Fossil Museum executive director Cynthia Crane said.

Crane says finding megalodon teeth along the coast can be rare and easier to find after a storm blows through, causing buried teeth to resurface.

She says she and other paleontologists like herself appreciate when divers send pictures of their discovery.

“It helps us educate on fossils and paleontology and the natural history of North Carolina. It gives people the sense of discovery, which is always fun for everybody to go out and find something unique,” Crane said.

Corbitt also runs Instagram page Apex Fossils, where he sells many of the discoveries he comes across, including the 5.8-inch tooth, which he sold for $350.00.

Crane says that megalodon teeth vary in price. She adds that they are like diamonds; depending on the condition and quality of the tooth, the value can change.