It seems the answer is they DID go the way of the dino. We just didn’t have a firm grasp of their fate as we do today. We didn’t recognize birds are the descendants of dinos until recently. As with dinos, crocs lost a lot of their variation, size with the changes in the earth’s climate, continents and oxygen content. But their descendants are still around.
Also I think it’s a perception thing. Crocodilian bones resemble their ancestors more than birds do with dinosaurs.
