“We were just in awe because we had never seen anything like this,” says
Dr. Stephen Godfrey, curator of paleontology at the Calvert Marine Museum in Solomons, Maryland.

Godfrey is referring to a remarkable find by the Gibson family in Chesapeake Beach, Maryland:
a snaggletooth shark skeleton in their backyard.

After a call from the family, Godfrey and assistant curator John Nance traveled to Calvert County to confirm the prehistoric fossil’s identity.

Digging through the sandy sediment — which dates back 15 million years to the Miocene Epoch — the scientists realized the vertebrae were adjacent to one another, lying in a lifelike position. Files — individual rows — of teeth were still intact, overlapping one another in multiple rows, and about 60 vertebrae leading up to the skull were found, although the hip and tail region are missing. The fossil measures about 21⁄2 feet long.

“This is the only skeleton of a shark that we have from along Calvert Cliffs, and it’s the only articulated skeleton that’s ever been found of this kind of shark,” Godfrey says. “It has given us a new perspective, and a lot of new information, on these extinct snaggletooth sharks.”

The snaggletooth shark was known for its extremely serrated teeth; it reached lengths of up to 16 feet. It became extinct during the Oligocene Epoch, which ended around 23 million years ago.

“The fossil shark is just one little piece of information that helps us paint this clearer picture of what prehistoric life was like — and that, of course, is what our goal is: to decipher the history of life here on Earth,” Godfrey says.

The skeleton is currently in the collections room of the museum, but it will soon be displayed
in the position that it was originally found.