Try about 200 million years, or more, 240 I think sticks in my head for some reason.
I hear that fried Aligator tail is great eating . I never had none myself, so's I can't say for certain.
Ever eat fried gar meat??? It's about the same, kinda tough, chewy. I ain't raving crazy about it, but it's okay I guess. Usually cut into slivers, battered, and fried.
I've got a lot of gator stories cause there's lots of gators around here. One gator killed a guy about 10 years ago here, not how you'd think, though. He was driving home about 2am, probably sauced "closing time", a 12 footer was stretched out across the two lane hiway coming from Magnolia beach and he hit it at about 70. Like hitting a downed oak tree.
When I first went to work down here, I lived about 85 miles north and had to drive it every day. We moved after about a year. Everyone in the Brazosport area was laid off at the time and houses were NOT selling. I digress. Anyway, I'm driving home down a FM road with rice fields on either side and come upon a huge gator stretched across the road. His head is in one ditch and his tail in the other. There's a guy stopped on the other side of him and he's out of his truck kickin' at the gator about his hind leg trying to get him to move!
I grabbed my Security Six and jumped out of the van and yelled at him to get his stupid butt back in his truck!
As he climbed in his truck, the gator got up and slowly moved off the road. I think if that guy had kept it up, you might have seen him on the evening news.
There was an alligator/frog farm near Damon, Texas when I was a kid and we'd go fishing there. The lakes were stocked with bass and they charged a modest fee. Signs about saying "don't pet the gators"
. They havested 'em when they got 6-8 feet or so. Weren't any huge ones around. But, it was fun trying to avoid 'em while you were fishing. LOL