Carcharodon carcharias is better known as the great white shark, and is
native to nearly all the major oceans of the earth. Its scientific name
comes out of two words from the Greek. The first is karcharos, which
means sharp or jagged, and the second is odous, meaning tooth. This
shark dwells primarily in the coastal waters off the United States,
Mexico, Chile, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and also the
Mediterranean sea.
The great white is the largest predatory, carnivore fish in the world.
Its jaws are more powerful than any creature on land or sea and has
earned it a lasting place in horror films. All sharks, including the
great white have an unlimited supply of teeth. They may have up to 3,000
teeth in five rows at any one time. As the front teeth are naturally
lost, replacement teeth rotate forward from the reserve back rows. In a
great white's lifetime of approximately 30 to 40 years, they may
actually grow in excess of 20,000 teeth.
The great white shark's teeth are pointed, triangular shaped, extremely
sharp, and each tooth is finely serrated. The front teeth grow up to 3
inches long. Their teeth are not attached to their jaw, but instead are
moveable like items on a conveyor belt. When the great white's jaw is
closed, the teeth retract inward much like a feline's claws. When it
opens its jaw, the teeth rotate outward into place. The two front rows
of teeth are used to seize their prey, while the back three rows are the
newly developing teeth.
A keen sense of smell is a shark's strongest guide to finding their
prey. The next most powerful sense actually comes from their teeth. A
great white's teeth are connected to sensory nerves in their head making
them highly receptive to the movement, or even the heartbeat of any
living creature. Young sharks feed on small bony fish, but as a shark
grows, requiring more calories to maintain their enormous size, their
targets of choice are marine mammals.
The great white shark decreased in population after many years of being
excessively hunted. In 1998 they became a protected species along the
coasts of the United States of America, Australia, and South Africa. As a
result fresh, new teeth are illegal to procure, but because of their
dense calcium phosphate composition, fossil teeth are quite widely
available, and completely legal to possess.
