Two local high school teachers found something special while on vacation in Venice, Florida recently. Wes and Kerry Kirpach found two halves of a giant shark tooth, experts believe once belonged to a megalodon, a prehistoric shark that may have been up to 60 feet long. Scientists believe the megalodon shark went extinct somewhere between 4 million and 20 million years ago. The couple found each half roughly 200 feet and one hour apart, then realized they fit together “like a jugsaw puzzle millions of years in the making.”
According to this Sarasota Herald-Tribune story, the couple has gone to that part of Florida looking for megalodon teeth for the last eight years, and have found dozens of similar teeth. But Wes says, ““By far, this is the best one we ever found.” They say they will display the tooth in their home.
I’m working hard to avoid a sentence construction that leads to me writing “Something about this seems fishy” (sorry), so I will just say that I think there’s at least a 15 percent chance that this is a publicity stunt initiated either by the Discovery Channel, to cover for last week’s fake-megalodon-documentary bad press, or by SyFy, to work up a public frenzy before the release of the forthcoming Megalodonado.
