Largest Land Animal Ever: Massive Alligator In Florida Video Is Dinosaur Cousin

A massive alligator walking through a nature reserve in central Florida has become a viral sensation after a video of the monster-like creature was uploaded to Facebook Sunday, according to local media reports. Florida resident Kim Joiner posted the video after she saw the animal at the Circle B Bar Reserve in Polk County.

“I love Circle B. Nature at its best,” Joiner wrote in the Facebook the post. It has since been shared more than 18,000 times.

Joiner described the animal in an interview with a local news station. "It looks like a dinosaur," News 6 anchor Justin Warmoth said. "Is that real?" News 6 anchor Kirstin O'Connor asked after watching the video.

"Yes, it's real," Joiner said. She said the alligator must have been at least 12 feet long. Asked about its weight, Joiner replied, "Huge!"

"It seems too big to be real. That's crazy," O'Connor added.

Alligator experts said the animal is, in fact, likely real. They told National Geographic big gators, which share a common ancestor with dinosaurs, are common in the wild, especially males.

“The largest published size record for the American alligator is a 14 ft. 9.25 in. individual that was killed in Alabama in 2014,” said wildlife ecologist and conservation biologist David A. Steen. “The American alligator in the video does not look nearly as big as those record-holders and I have no reason to suspect it is a fake.”

Florida, with more than 1,000 miles of coastline and mazes of marshes and rivers, is known for its wild alligators, with a population of more than a million of the reptiles. An alligator in Lakeland made national headlines last year after it creeped up on a 10-year-old boy at a local golf course. In Palmetto, a large alligator was film on another area golf course.

Alligators can keep growing their whole life. They tend to live until they are 80 years old and vary in size.

Nick Wiley, executive director of the Florida Fish & Wildlife Conservation Commission, told CBS News that if a gator "attacks a human it's mistaken."

"Alligators are not very sophisticated when searching for food," Wiley said.

The viral dinosaur isn't as big as his prehistoric cousins. The largest land animal ever is thought to be the Titanosaur, a dinosaur estimated to be between 82- and 92-feet long, and between 44 and 66 tons in live mass.