Boy finds giant shark tooth

A 9-year-old Florida boy found a 5-inch-long fossil of an ancient shark tooth buried in the sand on an Egmont Key beach.

A park ranger on the island, located at the mouth of Tampa Bay, said the tooth belonged to a megalodon, an extinct relative of the great white shark, the St. Petersburg (Fla.) Times reported Monday.

The boy, Grant Johnson, said he first thought it was a piece of driftwood.

Megalodons, which have been extinct for 2 million years, were more than twice as long as great white --up to 60 feet long and weighing as much as 77 tons. Bob Hueter, director of the Center for Shark Research at Mote Marine Laboratory, said the ancient teeth turn up in "reasonably good numbers" on the southwest coast of Florida, the newspaper said.

Copyright 2008 by United Press International