Miocene Shark Tooth.

Glossy and dark as steeped tea, it sits cool in the palm and heavier than a tooth has any right to be. Over millions of years underground its enamel was replaced, atom by atom, with stone, yet every serration along its edge survived, the root intact and the point unchipped.

It dates to the Miocene, likely ten to twenty million years old, recovered from the phosphate-rich beds where Morocco's ancient seabed has given up shark teeth by the millions. The serration pattern and root shape point to one of the extinct mako lineages, smaller than the famous megalodon, and its mottled brown-black is the color collectors call root beer. Medieval Europe had no word for fossils and called these glossopetrae, tongue stones, believed to have fallen from the sky or from the mouths of serpents turned to rock. In folklore they were set into rings and pendants and said to sweat or change color in the presence of poison.

Details

• Fossil: Shark tooth, extinct mako lineage
• Age: Miocene, likely 10 to 20 million years
• Origin: Phosphate beds, Morocco
• Condition: Root intact, point unchipped, serrations preserved

How to use

Keep it on a desk or shelf, carry it in a pocket, or give it as a first fossil to someone just beginning a collection.

Proof that something with teeth once swam where there is now only dust.