Are crocodiles and alligators technically dinosaurs?

[Katelyn]

So on facebook, we're having a heated argument about this. I say not all dinosaurs are extinct, because the alligator and crocodile were alive back then, and still are now. Even though they were bigger back then and have changed just a bit. They are still related and at no time did they die off.

So I think they are technically dinosaurs, and if not then close relatives and descendants.
Whales, and birds too.

[Allan W]

Dinosaurs are in a subclass of reptiles.

[Cal King]

No, crocodilians are not dinosaurs. Crocodilians are relatives of dinosaurs only.

[Cal King]

NO,of course not.You're 100% wrong.
That's absurd.

[sunbrst30]

Dinosaurs are archosaurs (diapsid amniotes), which include modern birds and crocodiles. They have two holes in the skull (diapsid), which differs from anapsids (turtles) or synapsids (mammals). However, crocodiles and alligators are not dinosaurs, but they do share a common ancestor with each other. Dinosaurs arose in the Late Triassic (~230 mya) and dominated terrestrial environments until their mass extinction at the end of the Cretaceous (65 mya) and gave rise to the birds.

[A Real Monster]

Crocodilians are technically dinosaurs as are tuatara http://zoocrewkids.blogspot.com/s

[Night Sparrow]

No, Crocodiles & Alligators were never Dinosaurs at all. Although they have been around since the time of the Dinosaurs, Crocodilians are actually derived from a different group of large prehistoric reptiles called the Crurotarsans, which were just cousins of the Dinosaurs, as both groups of reptiles are classifed as Archosaurs.

The Crurotarsans shared the land of Pangaea with the early Dinosaurs in the late Triassic, but many of them went extinct at the end of that period, leaving the Dinosaurs to take over the land from the Jurassic to the Cretaceous periods while the surviving early Crocodilian relatives continued to evolve & survive alongside them in other niches.

Also, Whales being mammals evolved from land mammals that took to the water after the Dinosaurs died out, not from Dinosaurs or the Sea Monsters that lived during the times of the Dinosaurs.

A lot of scientists do believe that Birds evolved from small, meat-eating Dinosaurs belonging to the Coelurosaur group during the late Jurassic period, though.

[Serial Deifier]

Nope crocs are reptiles but dinosaurs are still around in the form of birds, birds are descendants of raptors

[Samuele]

absolutely not, birds are dinosaurs, crocodiles are only relatives!