Summer vacations for us were trips to each of my parents home towns (every other year or so). New Bern North Carolina for my dad and Martinsville Virginia for my mom. But first a diversion on what jogged this memory. It was Ingrid and me watching **Jaws** on the 50th anniversary a couple of weeks ago There's that jump-scare where the Richard Dreyfuss character pries a shark tooth from a wrecked boat. I'm like, *'you call that a shark tooth?'* (thanks, Alex, cheesy movie quotes for $400 please). One of my earliest memories of these trips was the time we hunted for shark teeth near New Bern. I must have been young because it's such a faint memory. But the souvenirs were amazing and makes me think I remember. My dad heard about a new road or development that exposed lots of marine life fossils. Shark teeth were the coolest, of course. And the thing is you just walked around and picked them off the ground. No heavy digging - as I remember anyway. We got a bunch. So many we were like, *'nah, leave that one.'* All this made do a little research. I learned that North Carolina has a state fossil - Megalodon - [here](https://www.ncpedia.org/fossil-fossilized-teeth-megalodon) - maybe that's the one below. There were many finds in the area including at the Martin Marietta quarry active during that time. **Fossilized Shark Tooth** recovered near New Bern North Carolina c 1970 ![[9D575FB2-C2D9-46B1-8417-FD2ACB60E5B7_1_105_c.jpeg]]