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Pennsylvania boy, 8, finds huge shark tooth fossil while on vacation in South Carolina
SUMMERVILLE, S.C. - Riley Gracely and his family were looking around the piles of dirt and gravel at Palmetto Fossil Excursions in Summerville when he saw something that looked like a tooth.The 8-year-old Lebanon, Pennsylvania, boy started digging in the soil, clay and gravel and pulled out a huge fossilized tooth from the long-extinct angustiden shark species, that was 22 million to 28 million years old."He got lucky," Riley’s dad Justin Gracely said in a phone call Monday.Sky Basak, who owns Palmetto Fossil with her husband Josh, called it a "once in a lifetime find."The tooth measured 4.75 inches — about the size of Riley’s hand.The Gracely family was on their annual vacation to Myrtle Beach and made the 2.5-hour trip south to Summerville to go to Palmetto Fossil, a 100-acre pit rich with prehistoric material including all manner — and parts — of sea creatures.South Carolina has many such locations, buried deep in the earth along the coastal plain, where ocean and rivers ebbed and flowed for millions of years.Gracely, 40, said he has been visiting Myrtle Beach since he was 5 and he and his mother, a microbiologist, scoured the sand for shark’s teeth.Two years ago, when Palmetto had just opened, Gracely saw something on Instagram about it and made the trek. This summer was their third visit.Last year, older son Collin, 10, found a 4-inch megalodon tooth, a species that came after the angustiden and the largest fish that ever lived, according to Encyclopedia Britannica.