Giant tooth of ancient 15-metre shark stolen from secret world heritage site.
Look, if it was you that stole the fossilised tooth of a giant shark from a national park in Western Australia, I urge you: fess up. I know, all of us dream of having a megalodon tooth in our homes, but this tooth belongs to the people, it is quite simply not yours to take.
The tooth in question was noticed missing by Cape Range National Park rangers last Friday after some intrepid bastard chiselled it out of place and absconded with it. Parks and Wildlife manager Arvid Hogstrom told 9 News that only a select few people were even aware of the tooth’s existence, as they had gone to pains to keep it secret until they knew what to do with it:
It was only lightly attached to the rock and that’s why we hadn’t made it public. We’d gone to efforts to conceal it while we figured out how we could protect it in the future. Probably with a little bit of levering and hammering with a chisel they would have been able to remove it in five or ten minutes without too much trouble.
At the time, the fossilised tooth, estimated to be some two millions years old, was hidden under a “special cover” and some rocks as a temporary measure until it could be placed in “bulletproof glass or reinforced grating” so that visitors to the park could view it where it was found.
Megalodons were fucking huge sharks that roamed the ocean scaring the shit out of everything with eyes until they went extinct until some 1.6 million years ago. They are estimated to have grown as large as 20 metres long, which is big enough to swallow you in one bite without thinking all that much about it.
The rangers are hopeful that whoever nicked it didn’t realise the importance of the thing they took and might return it when they realise they fucked up real bad. If you have any info about this missing shark tooth, maybe give the Parks and Wildlife Exmouth office a bell on (08) 9947 8000.
