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Name : Alligator gar ( Atractosteus spatula )
Where it endure : Rivers , artificial lake and coastal bay in southwestern U.S. states , down to Veracruz , Mexico
An Alligator gar (Atractosteus spatula) in water. Alligator gar is a ray-finned euryhaline fish related to the bowfin in the infraclass Holostei.
What it exhaust : Crabs , fish , birds , mammals , turtles , and carrion
Why it ’s awful : With their recollective hooter , thick armoured scale , and two rows of piercing dentition , these immense Pisces the Fishes could easily be misguided for a furious gator — hence their plebeian name : alligator gar .
They are the largest known species of gar and can grow to around 8 feet ( 2.4 meters ) .
Related:‘True rarity ' : Gigantic gator gar caught and released in Texas reservoir could break 2 world records
This enormous Pisces is " a in truth prehistoric goliath , " say biologist Jeremy Wade on " River Monsters . " fossil have point that these ancient beast existed 100 million years ago during theCretaceous period(145 million to 66 million eld ago ) , when dinosaurs roll Earth .
" Their survival is in part because of their unique defense system — scales made of a super hard enamel call ganoine , " said Wade . " This armor plating has hear them survive predatory dinosaur . " Thesehard , interlace elastic scalesprotect them from threats . Once gars are more than a meter long , theironly predatoris the gator .
And alligator needlefish grow tight . They start astiny toxic eggsbut reach out up to 2 animal foot ( 0.6 m ) long in their first year . They keep develop their entire lives , andcan experience to 100 year erstwhile , Solomon David , an aquatic ecologist at the University of Minnesota , antecedently told Live Science .
— Colossal 300 - punt alligator garfish catch ( and released ) in Texas bayou
— Angular roughshark : The pig - face shark that grunts when captured
— Late Devonian fish , the ' one who consumes others , ' was 8 feet long
Alligator billfish are also among the ultimate " living fossils " — mintage that have just changed for millions of old age . A 2024 studyfound gars have the tiresome rates of evolution of all jawed vertebrate . They have evolved so slowly that alligator gars and longnose gar ( Lepisosteus osseus ) — two species separated by 100 million year of evolution — can still produce fertile intercrossed materialization . Evolution across such a foresightful period of time typically produces wildly divergent specie that could never reproduce .
By contrast , that ’s about the same amount of evolutionary fourth dimension that separates wombat and people , two wildly unlike species that could never reproduce , study authorChase Brownstein , a first year graduate student at Yale , antecedently told Live Science .
Although their needle - sharp tooth are capable of do a nasty bite , these trap predators prefer eating Cancer the Crab , fish , and fowl . Yet , in the thirties , the Texas Game Fish Commission created a " gar destroyer"to attempt to electrocute the Pisces by hit 200 - volts into the water . Today , the fish isprotectedin Florida and fishing caps are in place inTexas .
