Shark tales: megalodon meets cutting-edge technology at FGCU
- Laurie D. Babcock
- November 13, 2024
- The Water School at FGCU
- Contributors: Savannah Kleiner, Photos
6 – minute read
When Florida Gulf Coast University earth science instructor Harry Maisch asked a staff member at the Wilson G. Bradshaw Library for assistance with crafting visual teaching aids, his goal was to help his students hold millions of years of evolution in their hands.
And that’s exactly what students are getting in his “Historical Geology” and “Current Topics: Fossil Sharks and Rays of USA” courses through The Water School: a cutting-edge approach to bring an ancient apex predator back to life.
The real deal
In 2022, Maisch looked into whether 3D printers in the library could scan items for replication.
“At the time, we didn’t have the ability,” says Matt Losey, coordinator of the library’s Creative Commons. “But when we purchased a 3D scanner earlier this year, I knew I needed to reach back out to him.”
Losey is always looking for a cool, new challenge, and the one Maisch presented was extraordinary: He wanted to 3D scan and print megalodon teeth.
Megalodon (Otodus megalodon), a shark species whose name means “large tooth,” dominated oceans for almost 20 million years before going extinct about 3.6 million years ago. The largest shark ever known, it may have measured up to 60 feet — longer than a school bus — with a jaw nearly seven feet wide. Sharks are cartilaginous fish so most of their skeleton does not fossilize, which is why megalodon teeth are most often found as isolated fossils.
“Sharks are unique because they’re continuously replacing their teeth. A single shark could have produced 20,000 teeth or more in its lifetime,” says Maisch.
He and Losey scanned megalodon teeth from Maisch’s collection and found other scans through websites like Morphosource and Thingiverse, two publicly accessible 3D data repositories. The University of Florida’s online repository of megalodon teeth scans also served as a resource.
“We ended up printing a total of 10 kits for his classes, with each kit containing 10 teeth,” Losey says.
They encountered a few issues with 3D-printing the megalodon chompers.
“The tooth serrations do not print,” says Maisch. “We just cannot get that sort of resolution with the equipment we have.”
Additionally, the 3D-printed teeth are lightweight compared to natural tooth tissue, to reduce materials costs associated with printing a solid, plastic replica.
Then there’s the issue of the color. When megalodon roamed the oceans, their teeth would have been white. As fossils, they change color over time as they absorb minerals from surrounding sediment and seawater.
“The white, 3D-printed ones don’t show it, but real fossil teeth from different locations around the world have unique color patterns. Teeth from offshore North Carolina, for example, commonly have patchy, mottled colors, and teeth from the phosphate mining region of central Florida can exhibit a variety of vibrant colors including blue, black, orange or green,” says Maisch.
But even without the serrated edges, heft or color variations of real megalodon teeth, the benefits of the replicas outweigh the negatives.
“Hands-on is always better,” Maisch says. “I could show you tons of pictures of megalodon teeth and those from their ancestors, but if you can physically hold something to compare and contrast, it makes it a lot easier to understand.”
Bigger isn’t always better…
Most estimates of megalodon’s size are based on the height and width of the teeth, which are then compared to modern shark teeth.
“We really don’t have much besides its teeth in the fossil record,” Maisch says.
But he focuses his lesson on the evolution of megalodon from the Paleocene Epoch, which began about 66 million years ago, through the Pliocene Epoch, which ended about 2.5 million years ago.
“The goal is to look at how megalodon evolved over roughly the last 60 million years — its ancestry — through the teeth. The premise behind the lab activity is to talk about geologic time, how climate and sea levels changed and the evolution of other animals, including marine mammals, progressed.”
In addition to the 3D-printed replicas, Maisch shares real teeth from his personal collection and a variety of photos as a reference.
“I want the students to look at, not only the tooth crown and root, but also determine if the teeth have cusplets — smaller triangular extensions of the main crown. Understanding changes in overall tooth morphology is the goal here and tooth size doesn’t necessarily matter.”
… But bigger is cool
Maisch says he loves it when people reach out to show him their megalodon teeth and fossil collections.
“Everybody’s always got a bigger one than the next person, right?”
What interests him most are deformed shark teeth or the less popular species.
“There are quite a few really small shark species in Florida that people commonly overlook,” Maisch says.
Why is that?
“Because everybody wants a giant tooth,” Maisch says with a grin.
