Girl, 9, finds megalodon shark tooth on Maryland beach

Amateur fossil hunters dream of finding the ancient and the rare

Molly Sampson, nine, was on a Christmas Day visit to Calvert Beach in Maryland, and told her mother she was "looking for a Meg", Qazet.az reports.

Wading in knee-deep waters, that's exactly what she found: a tooth belonging to the now-extinct Otodus megalodon shark species.

A local marine museum's curator called it a "once-in-a-lifetime kind of find".

The megalodon - ancient Greek for "big tooth" - lived in seas worldwide until it died out at least 3.5 million years ago.