Teeth

The giant teeth

Almost everything we know about megalodon starts with a tooth.

How this site works. Every fact is in our own words and linked to its source, beside it. Megalodon is known almost only from teeth, so many numbers are estimates. Where good sources disagree, we show each version in a “Sources differ” box.

How big?

Megalodon teeth can reach 18 centimetres long. NHM

How big is the biggest tooth? Sources differ

The largest megalodon tooth ever found is almost 18 cm long. Great white teeth are usually about 5 cm. NHM
Britannica gives the largest known tooth as 17.8 cm, almost three times the usual 5.4 cm of a great white’s tooth. Britannica
Smithsonian Ocean says its teeth were as large as an adult human’s hand, and some are over 18 cm tall. Smithsonian

The largest known megalodon tooth beside a typical great white tooth, to scale (our drawing, from Britannica’s figures).Drawing: our own, simplified, to scale

A large dark grey megalodon tooth beside two small white great white shark teeth resting on a yellow shark warning sign — A megalodon tooth with two great white teeth for comparison.Picture: Brocken Inaglory, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons (cropped and resized)

Shape

Like a great white’s, megalodon teeth are triangular, serrated and symmetrical. Britannica

But they are bigger and thicker, their serrations are evenly spaced, and they have a bourlette: a darker, chevron-shaped band near the root. Britannica

A big triangular fossil tooth with a golden-brown crown, a dark chevron band and a rough brown root, on a black background — A 140 mm megalodon tooth from the Atacama Desert, Chile.Picture: Géry PARENT, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons (cropped and resized)

A conveyor belt of teeth

Its jaws held 276 teeth. NHM

Its teeth sat in several rows. Each time one fell out, a tooth from the row behind moved forward to replace it, like a conveyor belt. NHM, still alive?

Sharks make new teeth all their lives. Depending on what they eat, they can lose a set every one to two weeks and get through up to 40,000 teeth. NHM

So shark teeth are always raining down onto the sea floor, which raises the chance that some become fossils. NHM

Teeth are also the hardest part of a shark, which is why almost all megalodon fossils are teeth. NHM

Because sharks shed teeth all the time, megalodon teeth can be found scattered on coastal beaches or just offshore. Smithsonian

Where they are found

Megalodon teeth have been found on every continent except Antarctica. NHM

Lots turn up off the east coast of North America: along the coasts and in saltwater creeks and rivers of North Carolina, South Carolina and Florida. NHM

They are also quite common off Morocco and parts of Australia. NHM

A large grey fossil tooth with a smooth triangular crown and a pale root, on a black background — A 140 mm megalodon tooth from South Carolina, USA.Picture: Géry PARENT, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons (cropped and resized)

In Britain

In the UK they have been found near Walton-on-the-Naze in Essex, but they are extremely rare here and usually poor quality. NHM

In the UK, Otodus megalodon teeth occasionally wash out of the Red Crag, one of the younger rocks of East Anglia. NHM

Planning a fossil hunt on a British beach? Read the fossil hunting codes and beach advice on our ammonites site first.

From tooth to body length

Body lengths are estimated from tooth size, using the link between tooth size and body size in great whites and other living relatives. Britannica

The equations for turning teeth into body length were updated in 2021, using a largely complete set of teeth, after earlier estimates were found to vary wildly. NHM news, 2022

A 2022 study used upper front teeth, which its authors say give better size estimates than side teeth. NHM news, 2022

A large cream-coloured fossil tooth with serrated edges, laid beside a ruler on a black background — A megalodon tooth beside a ruler.Picture: TomCatX, from an image by Lonfat (Wikimedia Commons users), Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons (cropped and resized)

Our opinion

Our view: a single tooth can tell you a surprising amount, but every length estimate rests on an assumption about how tooth size relates to body size. That is why the numbers keep changing.

Next: how big megalodon grew →