Post by WVsnowflake on Mar 10, 2011 0:28:52 GMT -6
Check out the size and the fact that they haven't changed in looks at all !! Maybe we could learn something from the gators !!! 
Tropic • About 75 million years ago, much of southern Utah was covered by an inland sea. Dinosaurs roamed its shores, fed on tropical vegetation and drank from swampy bogs, which could be fatal.
Lurking just beneath the water’s surface was Deinosuchus, one of the largest alligators that ever lived, which could snatch and eat dinosaurs as large as hadrosaurs (duck-billed dinosaurs) and Tyrannosaurus rex.
A cast of a Deinosuchus skull was unveiled Tuesday at Bryce Valley High School in Tropic, where about 150 students from kindergarten through 12th grade marveled at the huge fossil unearthed in 2006 at neighboring Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument.
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.
The skull eventually will travel to other schools before finding a permanent home at the new Utah Museum of Natural History in Salt Lake City, probably in November.
“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.
www.sltrib.com/sltrib/home/51389819-76/utah-alligator-skull-ago.html.csp
Tropic • About 75 million years ago, much of southern Utah was covered by an inland sea. Dinosaurs roamed its shores, fed on tropical vegetation and drank from swampy bogs, which could be fatal.
Lurking just beneath the water’s surface was Deinosuchus, one of the largest alligators that ever lived, which could snatch and eat dinosaurs as large as hadrosaurs (duck-billed dinosaurs) and Tyrannosaurus rex.
A cast of a Deinosuchus skull was unveiled Tuesday at Bryce Valley High School in Tropic, where about 150 students from kindergarten through 12th grade marveled at the huge fossil unearthed in 2006 at neighboring Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument.
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.
The skull eventually will travel to other schools before finding a permanent home at the new Utah Museum of Natural History in Salt Lake City, probably in November.
“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.
www.sltrib.com/sltrib/home/51389819-76/utah-alligator-skull-ago.html.csp
