Two million years ago, it wasn't safe
to go in the water, thanks to a predator the size of a
Greyhound bus. These days, you have to search the Peruvian
desert to get face-to-face with the granddaddy of
Jaws.
"Roberto, Roberto, come see!"
I'd made a remarkable discovery in the Ocucaje Desert, 12 miles
inland from
Peru's southern coast, but my guide was a quarter of a
mile away, relieving himself in a gully. I jumped up and down,
screamed, and did a few cartwheels, which made my head swirl, but
still no Roberto. Here in one of the oldest and quietest places on
Earth - a wondrous desert of tiered escarpments, sedimentary rock,
and level stretches between Precambrian volcanic mountains - no one
else would hear my squeals. Waiting for Roberto to reappear, I
paced back and forth across a fossil-embedded steppe, a broken
section of the ocean floor that was thrust 2,600 feet above sea
level 12 million years ago. When he finally returned and saw my big
surprise - a three-inch-long fossilized tooth from a megalodon
shark - a beaming Roberto said, "Pachamama ["earth mother"] sent me
to the water closet so you'd find this gift."
Three weeks earlier, I'd read an online posting about Roberto
Penny Cabrera, and called him to find out more about the ocean's
largest-ever predator. "Forget Jaws. The megalodon was more than
twice as long as a great white shark, much larger than a Greyhound
bus," he told me. "With an enormous mouth 11 feet high and nine
feet across, it could break a whale in two with one bite."
Roberto's enthusiasm for "sharkies" was endearing. Later I learned
he was actually saying "shark teeth" so fast that the words ran
together, but by then I'd grown fond of the term and chose to hear
it that way.
A self-taught geologist and finder of prehistoric shark teeth,
Roberto is the eyes and ears of world-renowned paleontologists who
share his obsession for the
Carcharocles megalodon shark,
which terrorized the sea between two million and 16 million years
ago. Consumed with the geology of the Ocucaje Desert, this
50-year-old with an aristocratic Spanish heritage prefers a life of
few possessions - some desertworthy garb and gear, books, a chess
set, and a signed declaration from Peru's National Institute of
Culture that names him an official protector of the Ocucaje. His
home in Ica, 200 miles south of
Lima, is decorated with satellite
maps of the desert. Most of his megalodon collection is stored
elsewhere - perhaps someday he'll open his own museum. Even so,
Roberto considers himself a finder, not a collector.
I FIRST MEET ROBERTO a few miles from Ica at my hotel in
Huacachina, a tiny palm-fringed lake surrounded by monstrous sand
dunes. "So, how'd you hear about me?" he asks. "And why would a
woman from
New York City want to go 150 kilometers off-road to look
for sharkies in one of the driest deserts in the world?" I blurt
out: "When I was a little girl, my grandfather used to take me to a
canyon in
California, where we found fossils of fish and seashells.
I was completely in awe of the fact that something millions of
years old could still exist. My grandpa was the most fascinating
man I'd ever met." Upon hearing this story, Roberto melts. And
suddenly I realize that my entrée to the depths of the Ocucaje
hasn't been a sure thing. "You've passed the test," he announces.
"I will pick you up tomorrow morning at eight."
Only then does Roberto pull out a map and an album. "Gail, what
you're about to see will shock you. If I showed these photos to
everyone in Huacachina, there'd be a line of people fighting to go
with me." I am mesmerized. We're talking fossilized whale
skeletons, giant shark teeth larger than a man's hand, pre-Hispanic
pottery partially exposed in the sand, and human bones and skulls
exposed by grave robbers, or
huaqueros, who plundered the
3,000-year-old tombs of the Paracas people.
Clad in hiking boots, a khaki shirt, an Australian oilskin hat,
lightweight pants with zip-off legs, and with a 10-inch knife
hanging from his belt, Roberto arrives the next morning driving the
heavily modified 1981 Datsun truck he fondly calls Hermelinda.
Provisioned with food and bottled water, camping gear, firewood,
three spare tires, and a makeshift shower with a 27-gallon tank, we
are good to go. We take off, first through the little town of
Ocucaje, where locals we pass acknowledge Roberto's desert foray
with a salute. We won't see another human being for two days.
Within an hour, we're off-roading in a landscape formed over
millions of years by colliding tectonic plates. Our first stop: a
large fossilized whale skeleton that includes eye sockets, a skull,
and a partial spine and vertebrae. So what happened to the rest?
"Erosion wouldn't destroy half a whale," Roberto says. "No, the
lower part had to be taken by something strong, and that's the
megalodon. See the sharp break in the spine? Sometimes you'll even
find teeth marks on the bones." All around us are earthy-looking
heaps, more fossilized skeletons, but Roberto is barely interested
in the whales - all he can think about are megalodons.
As Hermelinda bounces us deeper into the Ocucaje and temperatures
soar to 96 degrees, caffeine-addicted Roberto guzzles quarts of
warm
Coca-Cola - diesel for his body, he declares - and I chug
bottled water. When the heat gets to him, Roberto stops to take a
shower fully clothed and climbs back into the truck, dripping wet.
Every couple of hours, he checks in with one of two SOS contacts to
make sure someone knows our whereabouts at all times.
Periodically, he makes a close-up inspection of an area before
promising that shark teeth can be found there. What is he looking
for? "First, you must find a spot with brown," he says, fingering
some powdery rust-colored soil, "organic remains, mostly plankton.
And when you have plankton, you'll find a chain of consequences of
life - fossils, shells, small pieces of bone, and also shark teeth.
But you won't see the teeth unless a strong wind hits the ground at
just the right angle to bring them out into the open." Taking them
out of the desert is entirely legal, I learn, because within 10 to
12 weeks, wind and sun will break them into little splinters.
Roberto spots a dozen teeth before I find my first, an inch-long
mako shark tooth. I quickly realize this sport can be addictive -
we don't even stop for lunch. By late afternoon, I've found only a
few small teeth, but Roberto reassures me. "Don't worry, Gail.
We're just starting today. Tomorrow you'll find the big one. Now
it's time for some dinner."
We set up camp in a sheltered spot below a six-foot-high ledge of
diatomite, a sedimentary rock that's rich in ocean plankton
remains. Within minutes, Roberto unloads lounge chairs, sleeping
bags, a small table, firewood, and the food - fresh-baked rolls as
soft as cotton balls, plus cheese and assorted canned goods.
Famished, I grab a can of frijoles, which Roberto opens with his
knife, and I eat them straight from the can without even bothering
to heat them up. As I wolf down my meal, I realize how
extraordinary it is to be dining beneath a 23-million-year-old
piece of the ocean floor, and I think that perhaps the remarkable
surroundings help make the beans so sweet and tasty, despite their
being cold. Later, Roberto builds a campfire and pours boxed red
wine into our mugs - he spikes his with Coca-Cola (more diesel) and
then we toast: "Salud! Mañana, el megalodon."
For a while, we stop talking about sharks, or anything else for
that matter, indulging only in the delicious absence of sound. And
when our campfire burns down to a few glowing embers, a moonless
dark sky graces us with a larger-than-IMAX screening of a meteor
shower.
Search and Rescue
"Wake up, Gail, you can't miss the sunrise," Roberto mumbles. I
appreciate the 5:15 a.m. heads-up, but I'm not ready to emerge
from my bag. Roberto goes back to sleep and starts snoring, but I
am so wide awake that I give up. When the sun comes up, I wander
far enough to feel entirely alone in the mysteriously beautiful
desert that lacks living creatures, rainfall, or anything that has
a scent. An hour later, Roberto tracks me down - by following the
aroma of my SPF 45 sunscreen, he claims - to bring me a mug of
campfire coffee.
"If you want a big find, Gail, get ready for a hard ride," he
warns, which doesn't worry me until too late. As we bounce along in
Hermelinda and up impossible inclines, I swear he's thisclose to
driving us off of a cliff. Then he spots something, a long shape
that stands out in the layers of rocky sediment, and he screeches
Hermelinda to a stop. "See the tooth sockets? That's the jawbone of
a dolphin, so we know that we're on a broken piece of the ocean
floor." Roberto starts searching for other signs too - patches of
brown organic matter, fossils, small bone fragments, and the wind.
It's as if he can almost smell a big find, following these clues
right to the exposed tip of a magnificent four-inch megalodon.
"Imagine how many sharks lived over millions of years. Then realize
that each one had about 140 teeth that could be replaced hundreds
of times," Roberto says. "For every megalodon that lived, there
could be thousands of teeth - the only remnants, since sharks don't
have bones. Your chances of finding one are pretty good. So search
this area thoroughly, and I'll be back."
About 50 feet from the place where Roberto made his find, I spot a
pointed shape that stands out in the sediment. I am thrilled but
cautious - until I carefully brush off the powdery magnesium-rich
sediment that had protected the tooth for millions of years, and I
can fully see its size and serrated edge. At that moment, I know
I've found a shiny, well-preserved megalodon. And where is my shark
master in this moment of discovery? Indisposed.
When he finally returns, Roberto is even more excited than I am as
he works cautiously with brush and tools to extricate the tooth,
which comes out nearly intact. "Don't worry about that small damage
on the root. My restorer, Nestor, will make it perfect," he
promises. And he does. Back in Ica, I relinquish my 28 shark teeth
to Nestor Diaz Cegarra, who cleans, polishes, and repairs them
before I leave for Lima the next day.
The handover takes place at Ica’s best restaurant, El Otro Peñoncito, where Nestor spreads out the polished sharks’ teeth on the dark green tablecloth for my approval. Everyone is amazed — diners, waiters, and sidewalk passersby who hear the fuss. Later, Roberto and Nestor see me off at the bus station and wave until I am out of sight. That’s when I unroll the cotton-wrapped teeth. Suddenly, I understand why Roberto calls himself a finder, not a collector. It’s not about hoarding and storing, it’s about rescuing a piece of the past … before it’s too late.
AuthorGail Harington is a freelance writer in New York who collects seashells, shoes — and now, shark teeth. She has written for
Cooking Light, Departures, More, Spa, and
Travel + Leisure.
Tours
For tours in the Ocucaje Desert, call
Roberto Penny Cabrera at 011-51-56-962-4868 or e-mail him at icadeserttrip@yahoo.es. Per-person rates start at $100 per day. Round-trip service between Lima and Ica costs $30 on the Ormeno bus line and takes about four hours each way.