Imagine the idea of discovering your very own prehistoric megalodon tooth and being the first human to ever touch it!

Venice is an area rich in fossils of all kinds! Let’s have a quick look at the background and why that is:

Over 2.5 million years ago, Venice was the stomping grounds of “The Meg”. Expectant mothers would come to the shallow, nursery-like waters around Venice to drop their pups, many of which stayed in the area to feed on whales and dugongs before heading out into cooler waters.

As the megs fed, they were continually dropping and replenishing their teeth, with younger sharks replacing their teeth more often than older sharks. They had three rows of razor-sharp teeth, shedding thousands of them during their lifetime and making Venice the “Shark Tooth Capital of the World”.

Along with meg teeth, we find a variety of other shark teeth on our dives (‘extinct mako’, Hemipristis serra – aka. snaggletooth, tiger, bull, lemon, sand tiger, and the occasional great white), as well as a plethora of mammal fossils.

Not only were the waters around Venice once deep and megalodon-filled, but during the last Ice Age, they were dry land extending out over 100 miles further than today. During this time, the area was home to animals such as Colombian mammoths, American mastodons, giant ground sloths, prehistoric North American horses, saber-toothed cats, dire wolves, and glyptodonts.

Today, these fossils sit all at the bottom of the Gulf waiting for divers to discover them – the most sought after being the infamous megalodon tooth.