(CNN/WHDH) — A girl who celebrated her spring break at the beach just happened to stumble upon a megalodon shark tooth, which could date back more than three million years.
Avery Fauth found the tooth on Monday as she walked along North Topsail Beach in North Carolina, according to WECT-TV.
Fauth’s father had been looking for a megalodon tooth for more than 20 years and got her and her sisters interested in hunting for shark teeth.
Fauth told the news outlet that she was down by the water when she saw something in the sand. When she pulled out the black tooth, everyone started screaming.
“We were all kind of like jumping up and down and screaming really loud And my dad didn’t believe us at first,” she said. “I was Facetiming people and they said that we bought it. They kind of didn’t believe us but then whenever I came back and showed them, they said it was really cool.”
The megalodon was the largest shark ever documented and went extinct about 3.6 million years ago.
It was formerly thought to be a member of the family Lamnidae, making it closely related to the great white shark.
(Copyright (c) 2024 CNN. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)