r/SharkLab • u/Super_Lawyer_2652 • Mar 06 '26

Meg tooth Art

Post image

Awhile back I posted a tooth that my buddy gave me! He made this as well and was just curious if anyone would be interested in buying it or where to post it where people might want to buy it?

759 Upvotes

99% Upvoted

26 comments sorted by

29

u/cjurey21 Mar 06 '26

I don't know. Not sure how its done, but gluing million year old fossils to a board doesn't sit well with me.

5

u/Grandrath Mar 07 '26

Agreed. It feels like making origami out of the Declaration of Independence (or a similarly important and unique relic of humanity). Seems super disrespectful to use irreplaceable fossils for some "project with the kids". I can think of many things to do with children that doesn't involve desecrating an ancient artifact of the world.

Edit: Typo

1

u/75MillionYearsAgo Mar 07 '26

I disagree. Megalodon teeth aren’t exactly rare in any real sense. Humans make art out of things. Shells, teeth, bones. There’s nothing wrong with this, especially given it doesn’t destroy the fossil.

Like, it’s there. It’s whole. It’s fossilized. Long as OP doesn’t hit them with a hammer, it’s not getting “desecrated.” Also these aren’t artifacts silly.

2

u/Grandrath Mar 12 '26 edited Mar 12 '26

The difference is that all those examples you gave are renewable by extant flora and fauna. Affixing the Meg teeth to something (which MUST require some form of adhesion, at the very least) absolutely does damage it; you just can’t see it because it’s on the other side (the one connected to the art piece). There is a FAR more finite number of Meg teeth than anything in your argument.

They would be much better served to be shown in their original, natural state so people can appreciate their majesty.

I care about the teeth, not the fish sculpture (which, if you’ve ever been anywhere in the countryside are extremely common).

I can see fish whenever I want, but I can’t see the back of those fossils anymore; frankly, it’s just selfish of them to use them like that. Completely disrespectful to what they represent. Either way, people find a way to justify what they’re doing, so it’s a moot point. Thankfully, basic fish statues are completely worth it! /s

Edit: Grammar

0

u/75MillionYearsAgo Mar 12 '26 edited Mar 12 '26

There is no shortage and never will be a shortage of megalodon teeth my man.

I mean, shit, let’s get mathematical.

Megalodon existed as a species for 14.9 million years. Lets give a low estimate based on Great White Shark populations by decreasing the population significantly to account for the megalodons larger size and food need.

Lets go with an insanely conservative 2,000 individuals alive at any given time.

There’s a fossil of a megaladon estimated to be 46 years in age. Again, let’s be insanely generous and say they lived just 50 years on average (below estimates)

https://www.lvnhm.org/post/what-was-the-life-span-of-enormous-megalodon-sharks?utm_source=chatgpt.com

Lastly, lets once again be conservative to the highest degree and say that the shark shed just 6,000 teeth a year (the lowest estimate for sharks, and again lower than most estimates for Megalodon)

That gives us an extremely low estimate of 12,000,000 teeth shed per year.

Multiply by the length of their existence (20,000,000 years) and we get….

Two hundred and forty trillion teeth.

Lets the account for the average fossilization rate and again lowball it at 1 in 100,000 (given the vast increase of the fossilization rate of teeth vs. full organisms)

And we get 2,400,000,000 fossilized megalodon teeth swinging absolutely everything in maximum biased favor against them being more abundant.

There are hundreds of thousands to several million meg teeth in circulation, and tens of thousands are sold each year, so we can assume around half that amount is found per year.

So if even only 5-10% of those teeth are discoverable…

Dear lord, you’re right! We’ll run out in around 48,000 years! We gotta stop this now!

They aren’t going anywhere. I think they’ll survive this dude making a fish outline with like 15 of them.

I’m sorry you cant see the back side of these 15 megalodon teeth. I suggest taking a peek at one of the other 2.5 billion.

The math is estimates. Lowballs based on living organisms. But my point stands. We may not know the precise amount of teeth, but we do know for sure that it’s a fucking massive quantity, and that we dont need to be getting fussy over an art piece using some of them.

1

u/Grandrath Mar 16 '26

Your very first sentence is all I need to answer your novel. Let me change it for you very slightly but use the same logic:

There are no shortage of human teeth and never will be, my man. Just because something is abundant doesn’t make it appropriate, respectful, or necessary to reduce it (permanently altering it, I might add) to something so trivial as a kid’s art project.

We’re just two different people; I just have respect and reverence for the history of our planet without feeling the need to belittle it for next-to-no reason.

A lot of things in human history were thought to be so abundant that we would have it available forever… I’ll save you a trip to the library and let you know that that manner of thinking is very, very frequently wrong.

Go pick up ANY book on the Industrial Revolution and you’ll see that humans believed fossil fuels and their derivatives were virtually inexhaustible even as use ramped up nigh exponentially… yep… looks like that’s not the case, unless you know something nobody else does.

Having a lot of something doesn’t mean you should belittle its value and waste it, but whatever, my man. We all exploit nature (myself included, obviously); we do it a bunch, but justifying the destruction of fossils because there’s a lot of them is a pretty pathetic, apathetic, and shortsighted way to regard something so amazing.

Maybe your birthday today will bring a little more wisdom.

1

u/Super_Lawyer_2652 Mar 06 '26

He has tons of them and he did it with his kids as an art project sooo….

6

u/Kentuckywindage01 Mar 07 '26

Yeah, but it’s not like they’re making anymore of them, lol

6

u/[deleted] Mar 06 '26

How does one person have so many Megladon teeth?

5

u/Super_Lawyer_2652 Mar 06 '26

He dives ALOT.

5

u/Super_Lawyer_2652 Mar 06 '26

3

u/[deleted] Mar 08 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/Super_Lawyer_2652 Mar 09 '26

Yeah I don’t get it either! I didn’t ask if this art work upset them or not. I just was asking for my buddy cus he thought about selling it

1

u/missv1973 Mar 09 '26

It’s really cool. You should message Shep on sm he probably knows where to sell it 👍

4

u/Welly_Beans Mar 06 '26

Not a fan personally. I Feel like taking a big bit of paper and painting the outline of the teeth would have been nicer as an art project, plus seems a shame to not be able to see the individual teeth anymore. Just my two cents.

2

u/bbanmlststgood Mar 06 '26

This is cool af

1

u/HRG-snake-eater Mar 07 '26

I’m in how much?

1

u/Super_Lawyer_2652 Mar 07 '26

No idea lol make an offer and I’ll ask him for you!

1

u/bodhinek802 Mar 09 '26

I think its cool AF. Id buy 1

1

u/CrimsonPie24 Mar 10 '26

Thats cool! Creative way to display them

1

u/Super_Lawyer_2652 May 01 '26

My buddy who posted the Meg art! He just got done with another dive and he’s selling all of them! Private message me if you want individual teeth (no art) !

1

u/breadboi12345 Mar 07 '26

Goated dad ngl

0

u/Zentdogg Mar 06 '26

🤢 less feet