Looks like Molly did, in fact, have the best Christmas ever.
The Washington Post reports a 9-year-old girl with dreams of being a paleontologist made the discovery of a lifetime. Molly Sampson unearthed a fossil that’s estimated to be 15 million years old — and she did it on Christmas morning.
Molly had asked for insulated chest waders for Christmas to go shark-tooth hunting like the pros. After Santa came through, her parents took her to Calvert Cliffs State Park in Maryland to wade around for fossils.
Molly noticed something bigger than her hand in the ocean waters and dove to get it. Turns out she found a tooth belonging to the megalodon, otherwise known as the Otodus megalodon,a massive shark that went extinct millions of years ago. She had been wanting to find that exact tooth ever since she fell in love with fossil hunting.
“Molly has been searching for a meg because she knows how big they can be, and also how rare they are,” her mother, Alicia Sampson, told the outlet, adding her daughter has about 400 teeth in her collection. “Molly has literally been sharks tooth hunting since she could walk on the beach.”
Stephen Godfrey, a curator of the Calvert Marine Museum, believes the tooth belonged to a megalodon that was roughly 50 feet long. “Megalodon teeth are found on a fairly regular basis along Calvert Cliffs, however one that large are rare indeed,” he said of Molly’s find.