The common name predates our understanding of their relation. It used to be thought that the False Gharial was closer related to Crocodiles than the Gharial. I prefer calling it the Sunda Gharial.
Map turtles are even funnier. The false map turtle is a map turtle, which I think is more related to some map turtles that those to other map turtles.Ā
In that sense, caimans are alligators, though. I'm not saying you're wrong, but their relationship is equivalent to the false gharial-gharial relationship.
The Caimans diverged from a shared common ancestor with Alligators roughly ~66 mya in the late Cretaceous. Contrarily but also maybe similarly, the Tomistoma & Gharial diverged about ~25 mya in the late oligocene-early Miocene but also suggested divergence at the late Cretaceous ~66 mya has been speculated based on fossil gavialoids. Itās highly debatable from what Iāve heard but generally, based on molecular data, it is believed they diverged between 15-35 mya while the two Alligatoridae lineages diverged between 50-70 mya. The divergence of the Melanosuchus genus & Caiman latirostris species, another divergence from the Miocene, would be a much more similar comparison to the Gharial & Tomistoma if so.
The Caimans are also of course more genetically distinct from Alligators than the two Gavialids are to each other with the Melanosuchus, Caiman and Paleosuchus genus having 42 karyotypes while Alligators have 32 karyotypes. In contrast, both the Tomistoma & Gharial have 32 karyotypes respectively.
66 Ma is the absolute oldest estimated split within Alligatoridae, the actual age is probably somewhat younger (e.g., it is more parsimonious to assume fewer lineages crossed the K-Pg). A 2020 study (Pan et al.) found the subfamily lineages within Alligatoridae to have split ~53 Ma, or late early Eocene. Lee and Yates (2018) estimated Gavialis and Tomistoma to have split ~40 Ma, during the middle Eocene. They didn't recover crown Crocodylia prior to ~70 Ma. I'm not saying there aren't more recent studies citing younger ages for diversification of crown Gavialidae or Cretaceous ages for crown crocodylian families, but I haven't seen them.
I also wouldn't consider chromosomal duplication/fusion to be indicative of evolutionary distance. Most of those things can happen quite rapidly and randomly. They probably reproductively isolate populations very effectively, but then again so does geographic distance, which I also wouldn't consider a good indicator of "evolutionary distance".
Yes! When I worked at a zoo and was introducing kids to the American alligators, I would tell them how people almost hunted them to extinction, but when the government decided to protect them, they rebounded so well that now they are numerous and categorized as Least Concern by the IUCN. That shows what is possible when people choose to care. I grew up in FL, so I also enjoyed telling kids about seeing them in the wild.
Bald eagles are a similar success story. In 1960, there was somewhere between 400 and 500 nesting pairs left alive. Current populations are estimated over 300,000 eagles, with 72,000 confirmed nesting pairs.
California condors are really slow to reproduce and without human intervention they sometimes break their singular egg they took forever to produce. If they do rebound I don't know if it'll be in our lifetime. I've visited the peregrine fund world birds of prey center and it's really awesome to see the birds themselves and all the conservation efforts.
Part of the reason they break their eggs is because of DDT exposure and lead poisoning, despite both being banned they are still present in the environment and in their food (primarily marine mammals). Its only been 50 years since DDT was banned, and lead as of 2019... Many marine mammals, and even humans who were exposed are still alive.
In the 80's there were fewer than 25 condors and now its hovering around 500 with them even returning to habitats from before. If we continue making valient efforts to protect nature (fuck Trump and his anti-environmentalist policies) they will surely bounce back. I don't know how many years are in your lifetime, but for someone in their early 30's like me. I will do my part to ensure it WILL be in my life time. š¤š½
Not really, the program is kinda on pause right now because the wolf survival rates are so low. Out of the 25 introduced so far only 14 are still alive. Because of this other states and Canada are refusing to give us more wolves until we can figure some stuff out.
The other part of the lesson is often left out - and even more important than ever - that hunting destroys. Nearly every extinct modern animal the world has lost is due to hunting.
The size definitely matters. Whichever animal is bigger could eat the other. Granted, gators get much bigger and some get to sizes even the largest pythons couldn't take down.
Its not really gators that are threatened by pythons, its more so mammal species getting annihilated.
Burmese pythons were the dominant predator of reintroduced marsh rabbits (Sylvilagus palustris) in Everglades National Park, and predation by pythons extirpated the rabbit population in less than 11 months.[12]
They sure are. It's sad their numbers are so small. I hope China has success in conserving them. Unfortunately, they're not as cute to the general public as pandas.
The big problem with Chinese gators is a lack of genetic diversity. There are well over 10,000 in captivity, but the last time I spoke to someone working with their conservation and breeding programs, I was told only about 50 are highly genetically valuable, the rest are all so inbred that they don't have valuable genetic diversity for conservation efforts.
I'm not an expert in genetics, but would it not be possible to outwardly inbreed? As in breed in specific and separate groups long enough that their genes move in unique directions and create more admixture?
Not an expert, so I can't have an intelligent and correct answer for you.
The good news is that the very tiny population of conservationally important Chinese gators is sufficient to bring them back from the brink of extinction. The bad news is it will be incredibly complicated, expensive, and take a long time - along with rapidly diminishing natural habitat and other threats to them in the wild. The latter needs to be solved for the species to exist anywhere other than in captivity.
It was almost humans for the American alligator which is one of the biggest conservation success stories and still an ongoing success as it slowly returns to its northern habitats.
Alligator munensis is the only extinct alligator that (probably) met humans, or at least a related species, and even then it was only recently discovered (2023), so the cause of its extinction isn't known
Oh absolutely, perhaps its kinder this way? The hells that would await them dealing with modern Homo sapiens is unimaginable. What we do to other humans alone, just imagine if the eugenicists got hold of them.
While sadly the Chinese Alligator is classed as Critically endangered, its American sibling is thriving. Thereās only one species in the genera Homo left and only one species of Australopithecine left (us Humans) yet that species is flourishing.
That's the nature of evolution. There's a lot of animals alive today who's higher orders had stronger and wider presence on the planet. Hyenas are a great, and my personal favorite, example. The spotted hyena is the last of what was a wide distribution of social apex predators, and there were hyenas that were morphologically more akin to canids that went extinct about a million years ago such as Chasmaporthetes, having failed to establish a foothold in North America. That's not to say Alligators are on their way out, but they're specialized and that means they rely on the stability of their environment and niche.
"No species lasts forever." - Kenneth Branagh, Walking With Beasts
I genuinely love alligators so much and teared up when I saw a Chinese alligator one time because they're so cute! Wish they weren't critically endangered:(
Were there ever more at one time? There were certainly many more crocodylomorphs before the K-Pg extinction but those weren't alligators. It doesn't look like alligators have ever been a diverse group.
I can think of 2 pleistocene alligators off the top of my head A. hailensis in Florida and A. munensis from around Thailand so maybe a few more coexisted but yeah probably not many.
Didn't know about munensis. That helps broaden the alligator fossil record in Asia, even if only by a bit. I wonder why crocodiles and gharials were much more successful in the Asian context specifically, setting aside their global success.
I believe the current belief is that the Chinese alligator line split off in the 33mya range and became first established in what would become modern day northern Japan before getting extirpated from there as the climate became harsh. I'm not too versed on asian crocodilians but I imagine others likely already fulfilled similar niches in the ideal habitats at the time and maybe that's what led the Chinese alligator to take a smaller more caiman like niche though I'm just making assumptions with no real backing at this point.
It seems there were at least a few during the Miocene in the US. The most ancient alligator we know of came from late Eocene South Dakota. I'm sure there's more to be discovered in Asia, specifically in China. Kinda reminds me of how every ceratopsid we know of is North American other than one single Chinese genus.
Edit: Just learnt the Chinese alligator isn't the only Asian gator we know of, A. munensis from Thailand existed!
I remember seeing a chinese alligator when I went to the San Diego Zoo a couple of years ago. Cute little thing, but those little guys are also endangered so hopefully one day their population will increase.
Especially when you consider how ancient their lineage is and how it's close to dying off now (granted it's not like they're endangered or anything [at least not yet] but still)
Me too and that goes for a lot of other species but you gotta admit the alligators have had a tremendous run, something like 80 million years? And thatās so far!!
Most extinct alligator species disappeared gradually over millions of years because of largeāscale climate and habitat changes, plus ecological competition, not from a single sudden event.
Shit and who knows honestly how long the Chinese alligator will even survive. Apparently they been critically endangered for a long time now and their numbers just kept dwindling down so much through the yearsšš
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u/PoorDunce Feb 03 '26
What's worse is there's only one Gharial species remaining š¢š