Despite my overwhelming and sometimes irrational fear of sharks as a child (thanks Jaws), I am fascinated by them, current and past. I guess I thought if I learnt about them then I would be less fearful. I am not less fearful at all, they are fantastic killing machines when that is their purpose, so I determined I should be fearful. If I am in the sea of course.

I did continue to watch the other Jaws films, deep blue sea and of course The Meg. I drew the line at watching The Shallows though, just the synopsis increased my heart rate to uncomfortable. My imagination was enough there, didn’t need to see it (thanks Hyperphantasia!). I am in awe though of the idea and reality of the Megalodon, the sheer size of it and to think it was potentially as abundant as other sharks are today. It really is a monster of the past, vastly scaled down for our time in the sharks we have today, but luckily we are left with the teeth as a reminder of what used to lurk in the deep.

I have two different Megalodon teeth in my fossil collection which are two smaller ones.

(c) K Wicks