Why have alligators and crocs survived while other dinosaurs became extinct?

Question

What makes alligators and crocs more capable of surviving? They seem less skilled with their short lets and slow movement on land. Yet they outlived the mighty T-Rex, Brachiosaurus, Brontosaurus, Pterodactyls, etc. How???

Answer 1

The last of the dinosaurs became extinct at the K-T boundary, when the asteroid slammed into the Gulf of Mexico.

Crocodiles and alligators survived the impact because they lived in water and weren't flash fried like the dinosaurs in North America. They were able to survive the aftermath because they can eat fish and other things that live underwater. They are not dependent on plants, which died out when the resulting atmospheric disturbances blocked the sun, or those that ate fresh meet, which died out when the plant eaters did.

In addition, crocodiles and alligators prefer their meat "aged," so they were quite happy to eat the other dinosaurs that died.

Answer 2

The first point is to note that crocodiles are NOT dinosaurs. It's a common misconception but crocodiles are not and never were dinsosaurs nor were they anything like dinsosaurs. Referring to crocodiles and OTHER dinosaurs is completely wrong.

Pterodactyls were also not dinosaurs and were never anything like dinsosaurs.

As for why crocs survived, nobody knows. The most plausible explanation is simply that crocodiles are cold blooded whereas dinsosaurs were warm blooded.

Cold blooded animals like crocs can go without eating for months or even years at a time and as such are much better able to withstand catastrophes. In contrast warm blooded animals like dinos need to eat at least once a month just to stay alive.

TychaBrahe's suggestion makes no sense since there were many dozens of species of dinsosaurs that ate fish (plesiosaurs) along with other piscivorous reptiles such as the krononosaurs, icthyosaurs and pterosaurs. Yet those piscivorous and reptiles all perished.

There were also many hundreds of dinosaur species that ate carrion, including T-rex, yet those scavenging dinos all became extinct.

Answer 3

The crocodillian family aren't dinosaurs, they're reptiles. The dinosaurs were sort of intermediate between birds and reptiles.

Crocodillian young are small, and can eat just about any kind of small animal that gets in or around the water. They can go for long periods without eating. They typically eat insects and small frogs for the first few years of life. Without the usual losses from predators that would have been wiped out their, population could explode inside of a decade of normalized conditions.

They don't need to get their growing done on any kind of timetable, they grow all their lives. If they don't get enough food for growth they can survive and start growing again when conditions are right. Without proper nutrition the dinosaurs would have been permanently stunted, likely to the point of being rendered incapable of reproduction.

The dinosaurs had more birdlike metabolic rates, which doomed them when eats got scarce. I'd also observe that the dinosaurs were already in decline by the time the KT event happened.

Answer 4

The descendants of crocs and alligators were probably small, hardy or diverse enough to evolve. They were probably able to adapt to the change in the environment and diet. Not every bird, mammal, amphibian species survived either, during the extinction event 65 million years ago. Crocs and alligators are simply one of the few reptile species that survived.

Answer 5

As I was told, anything under 50 pounds had a free pass to the future.

Answer 6

they were able to survive famine and other disasters