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Where have megalodon fossils been found?

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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).

Fossil remains of the megalodon have been discovered in shallow tropical and temperate seas along the coastlines and continental shelf regions of every continent except Antarctica.1

During the Miocene Epoch, the species' distribution expanded from initial pockets in the Caribbean and Mediterranean seas, the Bay of Bengal, and the coasts of California and southern Australia. Eventually, their range encompassed waters off the coasts of northern Europe, South America, southern Africa, New Zealand, and east Asia.1

These fossils, primarily consisting of teeth and some vertebrae, date from the early Miocene Epoch to the end of the Pliocene Epoch. While some claims suggest fossils exist from the later Pleistocene Epoch, these are not considered reliable by the scientific community.23