It’s not the Heart of the Ocean, but it is an “astonishing” piece of jewelry that’s been lost since the Titanic sank more than a century ago.
A megalodon shark tooth necklace has been discovered in the wreckage of the British passenger ship, thanks to digital 3D scans taken last summer. Magellan Ltd., a deep-sea mapping company that carried out the project, announced the discovery last week in an ITV News report. Along with the shark tooth, the necklace is adorned with turquoise and gold jewelry.
“What is not widely understood is that the Titanic is in two parts and there’s a three-square-mile debris field between the bow and the stern,” Richard Parkinson, the CEO of Magellan, told ITV. “The team mapped the field in such detail that we could pick out those details.”
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While Magellan discovered the necklace through the new footage, they won’t be able to retrieve the jewelry because of an agreement between the U.S. and the United Kingdom that prevents the public from retrieving artifacts from the site, the outlet notes.
A project is underway to determine the necklace’s owner. Using artificial intelligence, researchers will examine footage of passengers boarding the ship, analyze the clothing and accessories worn, and use facial recognition technology to attempt to find out who wore it, according to Newsweek.
Parkinson said the shark tooth necklace is “astonishing, beautiful, and breathtaking.”
Magellan, along with Atlantic Productions, carried out a massive project last summer to scan and map the ship using two remote-controlled submersibles named Romeo and Juliet — roughly 2.4 miles deep. They spent more than 200 hours surveying and taking over 700,000 images, according to BBC News. The final product was a 3D “digital twin” reconstruction of the “entire ship, enabling it to be seen as if the water has been drained away,” Magellan said in a press release.
The scans show “never before seen” details of the whole ship and the debris field, as well as more minute details and personal objects — including the shark tooth necklace. Other items discovered include a pair of shoes, a top hat, unopened champagne bottles, watches, and even a serial number on one of the propellers, The Daily Wire reported.
Jan Eliassen, the captain of one of the ships involved in the expedition, said emotions ran high during the project. “I don’t think that one can really understand how that would have felt in the darkness of night when the ship you were on is sinking underneath you and entering the water,” he said.
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Atlantic Productions, one of the groups that worked on the project, is producing a documentary on their work on the ship. Atlantic’s chief executive Anthony Geffen said the group would “write the proper science of the Titanic.”
The Titanic sank in April 1912 after hitting an iceberg on its journey from Southampton, England, to New York. More than 1,500 people died in the incident. At the time, it was the largest and most lavish ship on the seas.
