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The American alligator ( Alligator mississippiensis ) species may be up to 6 million years older than previously thought, and has undergone very little evolutionary change in the last 8 million years, according to University of Florida researchers:
While many of today's top predators are more recent products of evolution, the modern American alligator is a reptile quite literally from another time. New University of Florida research shows these prehistoric-looking creatures have remained virtually untouched by major evolutionary change for at least 8 million years, and may be up to 6 million years older than previously thought. Besides some sharks and a handful of others, very few living vertebrate species have such a long duration in the fossil record with so little change.
"If we could step back in time 8 million years, you'd basically see the same animal crawling around then as you would see today in the Southeast. Even 30 million years ago, they didn't look much different," said Evan Whiting, a former UF undergraduate and the lead author of two studies published during summer 2016 in the Journal of Herpetology and Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology that document the alligator's evolution – or lack thereof. "We were surprised to find fossil alligators from this deep in time that actually belong to the living species, rather than an extinct one."
Whiting, now a doctoral student at the University of Minnesota, describes the alligator as a survivor, withstanding sea-level fluctuations and extreme changes in climate that would have caused some less-adaptive animals to rapidly change or go extinct. Whiting also discovered that early American alligators likely shared the Florida coastline with a 25-foot now-extinct giant crocodile.
In modern times, however, he said alligators face a threat that could hinder the scaly reptiles' ability to thrive like nothing in their past — humans.
Paleoecology of Miocene crocodylians in Florida: Insights from stable isotope analysis (DOI: 10.1016/j.palaeo.2016.03.009) (DX)
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Tuesday September 20 2016, @12:29AM
There are other reptiles that have not changed much in a very long time, my favourite is the Tuatara [wikipedia.org] which hasn't changed much in 200 million years.
The extinct giant crocodile mentioned in the article sounds a lot like the saltie [wikipedia.org] , which as any Aussie will tell you are frickin' huge.
I'm sure I saw one in the Perth Zoo that was 10 metres long, but according to Wikipedia they don't get much bigger than 7 metres, so I might be exaggerating it in my mind.
I guess if you're the apex predator they is less evolutionary pressure to adapt, as long as your food source is constant, and the saltie will eat anything it can catch.