A 25-year-old man went scuba-diving in a river in North Carolina, and what he found at the bottom has left internet users in awe.
In a viral TikTok video shared in July by William McGhee, under the username @ncdiggins, the poster dives into the river, filming everything he finds at the bottom of it, including fossils that he estimates to be millions of years old.
McGhee told Newsweek that it takes hours of research, scouting, trial and error, and a great deal of geography knowledge in determining where to look, but when you find it, the hard work "pays off big time."
"I found an ocean graveyard," reads a caption, as the poster says: "Believe it or not, if you go back almost 6 million years ago, this would have been the bottom of the ocean, and in that ocean were sharks, whales and other marine mammals."
As he descends to the bottom, McGhee immediately finds a shark tooth laying near gravel, and then another one nearby, both of which might have possibly belonged to prehistoric sharks over 20 feet long.
"I then found this exposed layer at the bottom of the river where all these scallops shells were washing out. This species of scallop has been extinct for almost 2 million years," McGhee continues.
Among all the ancient finds, McGhee also made a more-recent discovery, a bottle of Pepsi cola, which he believes is from the 1960s.
After retrieving his finds, the poster carefully stores them in a display case, labeling them to avoid getting the context lost. This includes naming the river, state, formation, age, species, and all other relevant details about the finding.
"It is important to keep track of where you find these things so someone years down the line can learn from it, just like walking through a museum gallery. A great discovery is only great when you can see where it originated from!" McGhee said.
"In these 'graveyards' today, you will commonly find Chesapecten shells (extinct scallop), all kinds of whale and porpoise bones, barnacles, clams, and sharks' teeth," he added.
"Sharks like the great white, megalodon, bull, tiger, and an extinct genus of mackerel shark called Cosmopolitodus hastalis (some call it giant mako, or white shark) can be found."
If you are wondering how fossils are dated, there are a few easy ways to do it, according to the American Museum of Natural History.
One way to understand the fossils' origins is by paying attention to their position in the ground. In fact, because old layers with time get buried by sediments, those found in the lower layers are usually the oldest.
Scientists can also date fossils by measuring the amounts of radioactive elements like radiocarbon or potassium to determine the age of the finding. They can also do it by measuring the amount of carbon-14 in their bodies, among other ways.
The video quickly went viral on social media and has so far received over 3.3 million views and more than 192,600 likes on the platform.
One user, Askmeificareha, commented: "Are you sure it's not a 1mill year old Pepsi bottle?"
Cel added: "Dude casually picks up a 2 millions year old seashell, what a gift!"
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