So crocodiles are not dinosaurs, but when you say essentially you don’t mean they’re exactly the same thing, you mean the differences don’t seem notable. I think it is fair to say that a lot of the suchian diversity paralleled the dinosaur diversity more than is often appreciated, at least early on. And some of the differences – for instance that most retained a sprawled posture, or that they never developed feathers – aren’t so obviously a benefit.
So it makes sense to ask what differences were important enough that they might have helped the crocodylians survive when the dinosaurs didn’t, the euornithine birds of course excepted. I think they picked a reasonable one, that crocodylians remained poikilothermic and so are more resilient to food chain collapses.
