About once every other month, I have a nightmare about being stalked by a giant crocodylian. I blame Alligator. The 1980 horror movie – which is surprisingly good for a Jaws-wannabe – was a near-constant presence on television when I was a kid. The gory spectacle immediately became one of my favorite creature features, and my dreams have been haunted by enormous, snap-jawed alligators ever since.

My love of prehistory only fueled the nightmares. Books and museum displays taught me that oversized alligators were not just Hollywood inventions. During the Late Cretaceous, over 73 million years ago, the roughly 40-foot alligatoroid Deinosuchus crushed unwary dinosaurs in its jaws. These monsters were real. A full-sized reconstruction