Description

Alligator mississippiensis
Pliocene
Florida, USA
Excellent 1 inch tooth.

Reptile.

There are alligators in Florida rivers, lakes, and ponds now and there were alligators in Florida rivers, lakes, and ponds earlier in the Cenozoic Era as well.  Fossil alligator teeth and bones are most commonly found in the state in Late Miocene to Pleistocene deposits.  Specimens from that time interval likely represent the same species as today, A. mississippiensis.

Alligators once had a much wider distribution.  They were more widespread in Asia but now seen in only parts of China.  They were also more widespread in North America during the Mesozoic and Cenozoic (present in Wyoming, the Dakotas, Montana, and Canada in the Cretaceous to Eocene; present in Nebraska in the Late Miocene) but cooling climates of the second half of the Cenozoic restricted them to Gulf Coast river systems and southeast coast by modern times.