Alligator Skull

[CURT]

Years agp I purchased an alligator skull from the same guy who sold me a crinoid holdfast which was labeled as a fossil pomegranate. The skull is about 5 " long and the bone is not mineralizes at all. The label said A. prenasalis from the Pleistocene of Nebraska. My research shows that nasalis is Oligocene. Are there any Pleistocene gators from Nebraska, or was I duped again? Eager to hear your thoughts.

[Xiphactinus]

Years agp I purchased an alligator skull from the same guy who sold me a crinoid holdfast which was labeled as a fossil pomegranate. The skull is about 5 " long and the bone is not mineralizes at all. The label said A. prenasalis from the Pleistocene of Nebraska. My research shows that nasalis is Oligocene. Are there any Pleistocene gators from Nebraska, or was I duped again? Eager to hear your thoughts.

Curt -

During the Pleistocene, Nebraska was on the edge of the glacier fields...hence the fossils you find of mammoth, mastodon, musk ox, etc. Not the climate for gators.

You might want to check out this website:

http://www-museum.unl.edu/research/vertpaleo/vertpaleo.html

There's lots of good info on fossils of Nebraska there.

[DD1991]

On 4/15/2008 at 10:21 AM, CURT said:

Years agp I purchased an alligator skull from the same guy who sold me a crinoid holdfast which was labeled as a fossil pomegranate. The skull is about 5 " long and the bone is not mineralizes at all. The label said A. prenasalis from the Pleistocene of Nebraska. My research shows that nasalis is Oligocene. Are there any Pleistocene gators from Nebraska, or was I duped again? Eager to hear your thoughts.

I checked Fossilworks and there is a species of extinct alligator from Nebraska, Alligator mefferdi (http://fossilworks.org/bridge.pl?a=taxonInfo&taxon_no=96549), but it is a Miocene critter, not a Pleistocene one. There are no fossil alligators from the Pleistocene of Nebraska, and Alligator olseni is known only from the late Eocene-early Oligocene of South Dakota.