AbstractThe evolutionary dynamics of cross‐reaction–diffusion equations of predator–prey type are investigated in the sense of fractional operator. In the models, we replace the classical time and spatial derivatives with the Caputo–Fabrizio and Riesz fractional derivatives, respectively. The nature of the resulting problem (is nonlinear, nonlocal, and nonsingular) do not either admit a closed form solution, while in most cases the analytical solution is too involved to be useful. As a result, there is need to provide a reliable numerical scheme that can approximate these derivatives in time and space. Hence, we formulate an approximation scheme with second‐order convergence rate for the time‐Caputo–Fabrizio fractional operator of order 0 < α ≤ 1 and L1 formula for the Riesz fractional derivative of order 1 < β ≤ 2 in space. As a case study, we consider two examples of strongly coupled cross fractional reaction–diffusion systems describing the interaction between two individual species that prey on the other one. We examine the system for stability analysis and establish the condition for the occurrence of Turing instability. The complexity of the dynamics of time–space cross fractional reaction–diffusion systems is theoretically studied and numerically in one and two dimensions for some instances of fractional orders.