Shark Teeth Pendants from South Dakota

When " Jaws" first swept the nation the demand for shark's teeth pendants soared out of control. Everyone wanted to feel as though they could carry with themselves the power of the shark. This may seem to be a ridiculous notion to those who believe that a tooth is simply a tooth when taken away from the giant, muscular mouth that it belongs to. It has long been rumored, however, that the teeth of a shark carry with them a great power of protection for those who are fortunate enough to wear them. It is perhaps believed that in some ways the strength and the spirit of the shark live on in these small remnants.

Every is familiar with the deadly potential of the great white shark, as well as any of the millions of sharks swimming around in the sea. The power of the South Dakotan prairie shark, however, is not as widely known. There are probably about a million people who would see that sentence and immediately reach for the Encyclopedia Brittanica to learn all that they could about the prairie sharks from the midwestern United States. There are no prairie sharks. Rumors of sand sharks have abounded from the Middle East, but the rolling plains of South Dakota boast no such creature. Why, then, are shark's teeth so associated with this landlocked state?

It was believed that during the age of the dinosaurs there was a great seaway that spread across the United States, connecting the oceans and allowing various marine vertebrates to find their way across the country. This accounts for many of the strange fossil findings that scientists have located in these areas. It should seem impossible to find the fossil of an animal that was quite obviously a member of the marine community in a part of the country that was no where near a body of water large enough for these creatures to survive, yet across the midwest and up into Canada that is precisely what is occurring. It is believed that this body of water followed a path up through the Gulf of Mexico that spread across the midwestern United States up through Canada to the Arctic Ocean, bisecting the United States almost completely in half. It was through this passageway that these creatures were believed to have traveled.

During the late Cretaceous period it is believed that South Dakota was completely covered by water. The fossil findings by scientists who are excavating throughout the state appear to support this theory. There have been findings of the fossils of many large marine animals who are believed to have survived during this period buried in the hard ground beneath the plains This includes those that were believe to be the ancestors of the modern day shark; many fossilized teeth have been recovered, and it is these teeth that are being either forged or sold by merchants of South Dakota.

While the prairie shark does not really exist, there do appear to be some forms of marine life that were able to survive on what became the plains of South Dakota. It is because of this that the state was given a claim to fame as a distributor of shark teeth pendants.

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