The very first time I ever went to the beach in 1977, my sister and I walked on the beach and looked for sharks teeth all afternoon. It took us a while but eventually we both found a couple that day and from then on, we were on a hunt during every beach trip! So anyway, this weekend I was going thru some wooden boxes I have sitting around and seeing what I had stashed in them, and I came across this vintage compact I had received from a friend years ago.
I love it when you see something you have forgotten about and it brings up really cool memories. This happened to be one of those items so I was totally enjoying remembering great times decades ago. I held it with both hands and carefully opened because the button on it was really hard to push. I got so excited when I saw all of my sharks teeth inside!
At that moment I remember exactly what I had done. I had always kept the teeth in a old empty matchbox and when we packed up and moved out of the country I remember putting them in this compact, to keep them safe. I guess that plan worked out......
Did you know that Sharks are constantly losing their teeth? Some sharks will lose maybe 35,000 teeth in their lifetime. Those teeth get replaced and sometimes within 24 hours. Dense flattened, needle-like, pointed lower with triangular upper, and non-functional are the 4 different types of sharks teeth. I used to think it was crazy that you could find so many sharks teeth. I mean I am not the only one looking for and finding teeth, alot of people do, and they are everywhere on the beaches. Once you realize Sharks normally have five rows of teeth and each of those rows have 46 teeth, it doesn't seem that far fetched that people find so many. Each of the different sharks will have a different number of teeth, but on average sharks will have an average of 230 teeth. I read that Great White Sharks can have over 50K teeth in their life. That is crazy talk!
I found two cool charts of Sharks teeth for the Myrtle Beach, SC area at chart source
I had never really thought about identifying mine, but it was kind of fun looking thru them this weekend and trying to figure it out. Wasn't as easy as I thought. Some of them are broken and some look like they could belong to several different sharks.
Did you ever find any Sharks Teeth at the Beach? I just thought finding Sharks Teeth was the coolest thing when I was growing up. Maybe I still think its pretty cool :)
These are my personal pictures, taken by me.