Overview
- The fossil tooth was recovered from a narrow rock opening at Townsend Inlet in Sea Isle City on August 11 when 11-year-old Bo Bowers reached in to retrieve an object his father could not reach.
- Staff at the New Jersey State Museum and observers from the Cape May Whale Watch and Research Center examined the specimen and verified it as a genuine Otodus megalodon tooth.
- Curator Dana Ehret said the find is highly unusual for New Jersey and would be only the sixth documented megatooth in the state because deposits of the right age rarely appear at the surface there.
- Museum experts proposed that recent beach replenishment projects, which pump sand from offshore to the coast, probably exposed or transported the fossil to the shoreline though the provenance is not proven.
- The family was allowed to keep the roughly 10 cm tooth as a keepsake and declined to sell it despite common market estimates of only a few hundred dollars, making the discovery a personal heirloom rather than a saleable artifact.