Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff, a production of iHeart Radio. Hey
Speaker 1: brain Stuff, Lauren Boblebaum. Here, if you traveled back in
Speaker 1: time eight million years to visit what's now the state
Speaker 1: of Florida, you might see sabretooth cats, some small ancient horses,
Speaker 1: and maybe even a giant beaver. But one animal would
Speaker 1: look exactly the same as it does today, the alligator.
Speaker 1: And this was news to scientists as of just a
Speaker 1: few years ago. In the University of Florida put out
Speaker 1: a press release about a former student, one Evan Whiting,
Speaker 1: who was at that point a doctoral student at the
Speaker 1: University of Minnesota. That summer, Whiting had had a couple
Speaker 1: of pertinent papers published in the Journal of Herpetology and
Speaker 1: the Journal paleo Geography, Paleoclimatology, paleo Ecology, which I'm fascinated
Speaker 1: about the existence of, he said in the press release.
Speaker 1: Even thirty million years ago, alligators looked much different. We
Speaker 1: were surprised to find fossil alligators from this deepened time
Speaker 1: that actually belonged to the living species rather than an
Speaker 1: extinct one. The modern American alligator, taxonomical name Alligator Mrs. Abiensis,
Speaker 1: is a member of the order Crocodilia, an ancient group
Speaker 1: of animals that's hung in there for more than eighty
Speaker 1: four million years. Whiting and his co authors re examined
Speaker 1: an eight million year old alligator skull found in Marion County, Florida,
Speaker 1: originally thought to belong to an extinct species. The closer
Speaker 1: they looked, the more sure they became that the skull
Speaker 1: belonged to the modern American alligator, which scientists have up
Speaker 1: until now thought evolved into a separate species around just
Speaker 1: two million years ago. Their analysis means the species has
Speaker 1: remained virtually untouched by evolution for six million years, longer
Speaker 1: than previously thought. This is interesting in and of itself,
Speaker 1: but the researchers believe it also shed some light on
Speaker 1: why the American alligator keeps too freshwater habitats in a
Speaker 1: place that surrounded by rich saltwater ecosystems. If the American
Speaker 1: alligator is as old as these researchers believe it to be,
Speaker 1: it probably once shared the Florida shores with a species
Speaker 1: of marine crocodile that grew to twenty five feet that's
Speaker 1: seven meters long, and when extinct around five million years ago.
Speaker 1: It's possible that the smaller species at the time, the
Speaker 1: American alligator, evolved to prefer freshwater habitats to avoid becoming
Speaker 1: a food source for these crocodilian behemoths. Study co author
Speaker 1: David Steadman, the Ornithology curator at the Florida Museum of
Speaker 1: Natural History at the University of Florida, said in that
Speaker 1: press release, evans research shows alligators didn't evolve in a
Speaker 1: vacuum with no other crocodilians around. The gators we see
Speaker 1: today do not really compete with anything, but millions of
Speaker 1: years ago, it was not only competing with another type
Speaker 1: of crocodilian, it was compete with a much larger one.
Speaker 1: Though it remained entirely unchanged over millions of years, the
Speaker 1: American alligator was nearly hunted to extinction in the mid
Speaker 1: twentieth century, when alligator leather goods became all the rage.
Speaker 1: It was listed as an endangered species in nineteen sixty seven,
Speaker 1: but after two decades of concentrated conservation efforts, it was
Speaker 1: delisted in and is now considered a species of least concern.
Speaker 1: Today's episode is based on the article Alligators go back
Speaker 1: six million years further than thought on how stuff works
Speaker 1: dot Com written by Jesselyn Shields. Brain Stuff is production
Speaker 1: by Heart Radio in partnership with how stuff Works dot Com,
Speaker 1: and it's produced by Tyler Klang. Four more podcasts my
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