Charcharodon Megalodon

Does anybody know any Carcharodon Megalodon sites near Indiana?

Without trying to be funny, I'm afraid your nearest site would be a commercial fossil outlet of some sort. Indiana was a long way from the ocean when C. megalodon was around.

Mike Everhart Oceans of Kansas Paleontology < http://www2.southwind.net/~mjever >

Even if he WERE near a Charcharodon Megalodon site, he would probably be better off buying the teeth. Searching for them might be fun, but you aren't really likely to come up with anything really great. When you factor in the time and expenses you would spend searching to find anything large and good, you come off cheaper just buying the darn things. Take it from me, someone who lives in South Carolina, location of some of the best of the best Meg teeth, and someone who buys all of his.

On Mon, 10 Aug 1998 07:04:39 -0500, Mike Everhart

But the collecting can be fun in-and-of itself. The two parts of fossil collecting that I like are the finding and the figuring out what it is. If you buy them then those two parts are removed. After I figure out what they are then they just become more items that clutter up the place. The thrill is gone.

People collect for different reasons...

Tom A web page for amateurs by an amateur... <http://www.mindspring.com/~sminstruments/fossils/>

I agree that there is fun in searching for fossils, but my point was that if you are looking for a large tooth in excellent condition, you are better off buying one because of the large amount of time that you would, on average, have to put in before you could find one. For instance, if I wanted to look for good Charcharodon megalodon teeth here in South Carolina, I would have to take scuba diving lessons, buy or rent scuba gear, and take time off work to travel to the Cooper or Edisto (or similar) rivers, then spend many hours diving in hopes of coming up with decent fossils. Now, if I had unlimited time and money, that would be great, but I have neither, so I buy the occasional good teeth and more less impressive ones. For instance, a few weeks ago I bought a lot of about 50 incomplete mostly meg but a few other species teeth ranging from about 1/2 inch to about 3 inches for $10.00 from a diver. But for me to FIND all of those teeth would have cost me at least 10 times that much.

BTW, for anyone who buys megalodon teeth, I would suggest that you do it sooner rather than later. There is a novel that has been out for a while now called _Meg_ that apparently (I haven't read it) is the typical 'killer shark going around attacking people' book but it involves a survinging C. megalodon rather than a Great White. It seems to me likely that this book will be made into a movie. At which point the market for meg teeth will mushroom. At which point the prices will also. Much like amber did after the release of Jurassic Park.

time off work to travel to the Cooper or.

.you could also see if you can get permission to enter one of those cement quarries in between Orangeburg and Charleston (native now in Atlanta) I did that durnig undergrad at COC and got a bunch of Eocene stuff.

jack ex-environmental geologist and soon to be ex- husband