Box with 3 fossil shark teeth with 48 pieces packed in a display.

Shark teeth, formerly also called tongue stones or (Latin) glossopetrae, are fossilized teeth of sharks. The teeth are the body parts of sharks that are best preserved as fossils. This is because the entire skeleton of sharks, with the exception of the teeth, consists of cartilage, which generally does not fossilize. The oldest known shark teeth belong to shark species that lived about 450 million years ago, while in the North Sea basin the most common shark teeth date from the Eocene and Oligocene and are between 40 million and 65 million years old. Teeth of Megalodon, which lived between 1.5 and 16 million years ago, are the largest known with a maximum length of 17 cm and are very popular among collectors of fossil shark teeth. Smaller shark teeth are fairly common in sediments of fairly deep seas. These fossils wash up on various Dutch beaches, especially in Zeeland and Zeeuws Vlaanderen, such as at Cadzand. These teeth are mainly of Tertiary age (Eocene and Oligocene). Shark teeth were among the first fossils to be correctly identified. In the 16th century, the prevailing theory was that the Earth possessed an inner force to transform objects in its interior into the likeness of living animals and plants. However, the Swiss naturalist Conrad Gesner (1516 - 1565) published a drawing in 1558 comparing fossil shark teeth with those of modern species. Later, the Danish researcher Nicolaus Steno (1638- 1686) would show that tongue stones found in the mountains often showed signs of wear compared to teeth from a recently washed-up shark. He also discovered that the rocks in which they were found were originally soft. Steno's conclusion was that tongue stones were the teeth of sharks that had died long ago.