How Old Are Alligators?

It turns out that as a species, alligators have remained unchanged for millions of years longer than anyone knew. Learn how researchers discovered this in today's episode of BrainStuff, based on this article: https://animals.howstuffworks.com/reptiles/alligator-species-8-million-years-old.htm

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to brain Stuff, a production of iHeart Radio. Hey
brain Stuff, Lauren Boblebaum. Here, if you traveled back in
time eight million years to visit what's now the state
of Florida, you might see sabretooth cats, some small ancient horses,
and maybe even a giant beaver. But one animal would

(00:23):
look exactly the same as it does today, the alligator.
And this was news to scientists as of just a
few years ago. In the University of Florida put out
a press release about a former student, one Evan Whiting,
who was at that point a doctoral student at the
University of Minnesota. That summer, Whiting had had a couple

(00:43):
of pertinent papers published in the Journal of Herpetology and
the Journal paleo Geography, Paleoclimatology, paleo Ecology, which I'm fascinated
about the existence of, he said in the press release.
Even thirty million years ago, alligators looked much different. We
were surprised to find fossil alligators from this deepened time

(01:05):
that actually belonged to the living species rather than an
extinct one. The modern American alligator, taxonomical name Alligator Mrs. Abiensis,
is a member of the order Crocodilia, an ancient group
of animals that's hung in there for more than eighty
four million years. Whiting and his co authors re examined

(01:26):
an eight million year old alligator skull found in Marion County, Florida,
originally thought to belong to an extinct species. The closer
they looked, the more sure they became that the skull
belonged to the modern American alligator, which scientists have up
until now thought evolved into a separate species around just
two million years ago. Their analysis means the species has

(01:49):
remained virtually untouched by evolution for six million years, longer
than previously thought. This is interesting in and of itself,
but the researchers believe it also shed some light on
why the American alligator keeps too freshwater habitats in a
place that surrounded by rich saltwater ecosystems. If the American

(02:11):
alligator is as old as these researchers believe it to be,
it probably once shared the Florida shores with a species
of marine crocodile that grew to twenty five feet that's
seven meters long, and when extinct around five million years ago.
It's possible that the smaller species at the time, the
American alligator, evolved to prefer freshwater habitats to avoid becoming

(02:33):
a food source for these crocodilian behemoths. Study co author
David Steadman, the Ornithology curator at the Florida Museum of
Natural History at the University of Florida, said in that
press release, evans research shows alligators didn't evolve in a
vacuum with no other crocodilians around. The gators we see
today do not really compete with anything, but millions of

(02:55):
years ago, it was not only competing with another type
of crocodilian, it was compete with a much larger one.
Though it remained entirely unchanged over millions of years, the
American alligator was nearly hunted to extinction in the mid
twentieth century, when alligator leather goods became all the rage.
It was listed as an endangered species in nineteen sixty seven,

(03:19):
but after two decades of concentrated conservation efforts, it was
delisted in and is now considered a species of least concern.
Today's episode is based on the article Alligators go back
six million years further than thought on how stuff works
dot Com written by Jesselyn Shields. Brain Stuff is production

(03:41):
by Heart Radio in partnership with how stuff Works dot Com,
and it's produced by Tyler Klang. Four more podcasts my
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