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I found this tooth on the shores of the Chesapeake Bay, where it is common to find Miocene shark teeth and other marine fossils. The length is about 6.6 cm. Teeth of Carcharocles up to 18 cm long have been found. The shark is estimated to have been over 15 meters long! Carcharocles megalodon was once thought to be ancestral to the present-day great white shark Carcharodon carcharias, and was called Carcharodon megalodon. It is now thought to belong to another lineage, which died out [J. A. Long, The Rise of Fishes, (Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, 1995), p. 82]. There is some disagreement on this point, with some claiming that Carcharodon is still the proper genus, and a website is devoted to this particular controversy.
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