A woman has been killed in an apparent alligator attack in South Carolina, coastal Southeastern region of the United States.
According to the Beaufort County Sheriff’s Office, the attack occurred on Monday the large alligator was spotted “near the edge of a pond” in Sun City Hilton Head, an adult-only community, “guarding what was believed to be a person.”
Responders found the alligator and a dead person, the sheriff’s office said.
However, the victim has not been identified.
The alligator is still being recovered from the pond, according to the sheriff’s office.
Alligators are active during spring and summer because when temperatures rise, their metabolism increases and they look for food, Melody Kilborn, a spokesperson for the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission explained.
Kilborn urged people to follow these safety tips: alligators are most active at night, so only swim in designated swimming areas during daylight hours; never feed an alligator; and keep your pets on a leash and away from the water’s edge.
TheNewsGuru.com reports that an alligator is a large reptile in the Crocodilia order in the genus Alligator of the family Alligatoridae.
The two extant species are the American alligator (mississippiensis) and the Chinese alligator (sinensis).
Additionally, several extinct species of alligator are known from fossil remains. Alligators first appeared during the Oligocene epoch about 37 million years ago.
The name “alligator” is probably an anglicized form of el lagarto, the Spanish term for “the lizard”, which early Spanish explorers and settlers in Florida called the alligator.[2] Later English spellings of the name included allagarta and alagarto.
Alligators and caimans split in North America during the early Tertiary or late Cretaceous (about 53 million to about 65 million years ago).
The Chinese alligator split from the American alligator about 33 million years ago and likely descended from a lineage that crossed the Bering land bridge during the Neogene.
The modern American alligator is well represented in the fossil record of the Pleistocene.
