5-Year-Old Birthday Boy Finds Four-Inch Megalodon Shark Tooth from Millions of Years Ago

The Megalodon shark has lived approximately 23 to 3.6 million years ago, during the Early Miocene to the Pliocene era. Although extinct now, its stories continue to hunt humans, especially with the fossils it has left like its tooth.

Scientists have been looking for fossils to prove the existence of the largest shark that ever lived. But it is not only them who dreams of finding fossils for young children also dream to find fossilized remains of a sea monster, like the megalodon shark.

A young boy celebrating his fifth birthday gets an unexpected birthday present when he found a black fossil of the megalodon shark tooth on the South Carolina coast.

Megalodon Shark Tooth For A Birthday Present

Brayden Drew, 5, came across the large black tooth fossil while on a family vacation with his family at Myrtle Beach. His parents took a photo of the four-inch tooth fossil showing that it is almost as big as the boy's hand.

"What a gift!" Brayden's mom Marissa Drew said in an interview with WMBF.

"My son found a megalodon tooth on his 5th birthday while digging on Myrtle (Beach)," Marissa wrote on Facebook accompanied by photos of his son holding the four-inch fossilized megalodon shark tooth.

The family now plans to frame the fossil and hang it in their house. Marissa added that her husband is determined to keep looking for other fossilized megalodon shark teeth.

She thinks that finding fossils and extraordinary things runs in the family as her husband has also found once a huge conch shell in Cancun a few years ago.

@twitter|https://twitter.com/GNewsTrending/status/1397997052471111681?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw@

ALSO READ : Megalodon Babies Were 6-Feet-Long Due To In-Womb Cannibalism

Confirmed Megalodon Shark Tooth

Experts confirmed to Newsweek that the fossilized black four-inch tooth that Brayden found is an actual tooth of a megalodon shark, a species that went extinct and considered to be the largest shark that ever lived.

Jack Cooper, a Ph.D. student who studies megalodon sharks and modern sharks at Swansea University in the United Kingdom that the size of the tooth would mean that it came from a big shark, assuming that it is an anterior tooth, then perhaps the shark could have measured around 32 to 39 feet long.

"I'm very jealous that [Brayden] found such a cool tooth at such a young age-that would be the dream find for me!" Cooper said according to Newsweek.

Megalodon Shark Fossils Often Found in South Carolina Beach

According to Global News, South Carolina sports many different shark species such as the great white shark. Many of this species' teeth are often washed up on the shore. But none of those could compare to the palm-sized birthday present that Brayden found.

There have been recent reports of several megalodon shark fossils found in the area and was confirmed by the tourism organization Discover South Carolina that these shark teeth and fossils can mostly be found in the beaches and inland areas.

Finding a megalodon shark tooth is considered to be the "ultimate prize" for fossil hunters. Earlier in March, a man found a 6.45-inch megalodon shark tooth in a South Carolina construction site and hope to sell it for several thousand dollars.