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How large was the biggest known megalodon tooth?

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Illustration of a female megalodon shark (Carcharocles megalodon) with a faint human scuba diver silhouette in the background for scale, highlighting the shark's massive size. Measurement bars at the bottom show 3 meters and 9 feet for reference. — megalodon Megalodon (*Carcharocles megalodon*) was a species of shark that lived during the Miocene and Pliocene epochs (23.03 million to 2.58 million years ago).

The largest known megalodon tooth ever discovered measures 17.8 centimeters, or 6.9 inches, in length. This size is nearly three times longer than the average tooth of a modern great white shark, which typically measures about 5.4 centimeters (2.1 inches). Because sharks lack bones, these fossilized teeth are the primary evidence used by scientists to study the species and estimate its massive body size.12