{"id":209359,"date":"2026-03-28T06:52:09","date_gmt":"2026-03-28T06:52:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/209359\/"},"modified":"2026-03-28T06:52:09","modified_gmt":"2026-03-28T06:52:09","slug":"wyoming-teen-aiden-andrews-discovers-ancient-megalodon-shark-tooth-off-florida-coast","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/209359\/","title":{"rendered":"Wyoming teen Aiden Andrews discovers ancient megalodon shark tooth off Florida coast"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A 6-inch megalodon\u00a0shark tooth\u00a0was found by a Wyoming teen during a dive trip off <a href=\"https:\/\/nypost.com\/2024\/06\/05\/us-news\/fossil-hunting-diver-makes-stunning-ancient-find-off-florida-coast-i-plan-on-keeping-it\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Manasota Key,\u00a0Florida<\/a>\u00a0earlier this week.<\/p>\n<p>Sixteen-year-old Aiden Andrews and his father Brian were on a guided dive with Fossil Junkies, a local fossil-hunting tour company.<\/p>\n<p>Captain John Kreatsoulas told\u00a0FOX 13 Tampa Bay reporter Kimberly Kuizon\u00a0that while finding small megalodon teeth isn\u2019t uncommon, finding one that size is quite rare.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/reel\/916964761131019\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">Video captured the moments<\/a> when Aiden and his father celebrated underwater after making the remarkable discovery.<\/p>\n<p>Popularized by Hollywood monster movies, <a href=\"https:\/\/nypost.com\/2024\/01\/21\/lifestyle\/megalodon-not-quite-as-mega-as-scientists-and-the-meg-filmmakers-thought-new-study\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">the\u00a0Carcharocles megalodon<\/a> was the largest shark to have ever lived, according to the Smithsonian Institution.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" style=\"aspect-ratio:0.7332636;display:block\" decoding=\"async\" data-modal-image=\"38921388\" width=\"433\" height=\"590\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/shark-1.png\" alt=\"A person's hand underwater holding a large, dark fossilized shark tooth.\" class=\"wp-image-38921388\"  \/>A 6-inch megalodon\u00a0shark tooth\u00a0was found by a Wyoming teen during a dive trip off Manasota Key,\u00a0Florida. Fossil Junkies<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" style=\"aspect-ratio:0.74707031;display:block\" decoding=\"async\" data-modal-image=\"38921389\" width=\"441\" height=\"590\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/shark-2.png\" alt=\"Diver wearing an orange mask holding a large fossilized shark tooth.\" class=\"wp-image-38921389\"  \/>Aiden Andrews, 16, celebrated with his father after making the remarkable discovery. Fossil Junkies<\/p>\n<p>Scientists believe the largest megalodon reached up to 60 feet in length and weighed up to 50 tons.<\/p>\n<p>And as Andrews can attest \u2014 they possessed teeth the size of a human hand.<\/p>\n<p>According to the Smithsonian, megalodon lived between 23 and 3.6 million years ago across all of Earth\u2019s oceans.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A 6-inch megalodon\u00a0shark tooth\u00a0was found by a Wyoming teen during a dive trip off Manasota Key,\u00a0Florida\u00a0earlier this week.&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":209360,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[32246,28,30,29,16190,19589,95772,4278,4624],"class_list":["post-209359","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-florida","tag-discovery","tag-florida","tag-florida-headlines","tag-florida-news","tag-ocean","tag-sharks","tag-teeth","tag-us-news","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209359","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=209359"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209359\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/209360"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=209359"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=209359"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=209359"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}