This is a beautiful fossil Great White Shark Tooth (Carcharodon carcharias) from the Atacama Desert in Chile! The tooth is in terrific condition with fantastic serrations and measures 1.387 inches (3.52 cm) along its longest edge with no repair or restoration!
Great White: (Carcharodon carcharias) The modern Great White Shark is the largest predatory fish alive today. It is also warm blooded unlike other fish and most other sharks. The Great White Shark grows to over 20 feet (6 meters) in length and feeds primarily on large fish, marine mammals, and smaller sharks.
If you spend enough time around shark tooth enthusiasts you'll probably notice a very high value placed on Chilean fossil shark teeth much more so than shark teeth of the same species, size, and quality from other regions. There are several reasons for this. The first is that you simply can't acquire them anymore. Chile banned the export of fossils in 2006 and heavily enforces, so all Chilean shark teeth on the market are from old collections (like this one) making acquiring them very difficult. The second is the unique paleontology of these shark teeth and the insight they give us into the evolution of the most iconic shark species alive today, the Great White. What is now the Atacama Desert is believed to have been a key location, if not ground zero for this species emergence as you can find fossil teeth from the modern species, the ancestral white shark Cosmopolitodus hastalis, AND teeth from an in between stage know as Hubbell's White Shark! A fascinating snapshot of evolution in action!
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Species: Carcharodon carcharias
Size: 1.387 inches (3.52 cm)
Found: Atacama Desert, Chile
Age: 8 – 2.5 million years old
Repair: None