Behold the Prehistoric Alligator!
Bryce Valley High School in Tropic, Utah recently served as host to the skull of Deinosuchus, described as one of the largest alligators that ever lived which could, according to the Salt Lake Tribune, "snatch and eat dinosaurs as large as hadrosaurs (duck-billed dinosaurs) and Tyrannosaurus Rex.
Explained the report, "The replica is part of a traveling exhibit assembled by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, which oversees the 1 million-acre monument in southern Utah’s Kane and Garfield counties... 'It was the biggest and baddest predator of its day,' said BLM paleontologist Alan Titus, who helped haul the skull from where it was found beneath a ledge on Kaiparowits Plateau. He said dating the ash of a nearby volcano proved the alligator lived 75 million years ago during the Late Cretaceous Epoch. It’s difficult to envision an alligator living in the current landscape of southern Utah. But fossilized plants and ferns that grow only in tropical climates are found everywhere across the monument, indicating the area was once a steamy swamp. 'It was global warming on steroids,' Titus said."
The skull is described as being six feet long and the creature itself was purported to be over 30-feet long, thus able to defeat 6,000 pound prey. "It was pieced together based on other fossils of the reptile found in Texas and took nearly five years to clean and study," notes the report.
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