Dinosaurs Facts for Kids
Roar-some facts about dinosaurs
During much of the Cretaceous period, Earth was so warm that there were no permanent polar ice caps and sea levels were much higher than today.
Real Velociraptors lived in what is now Mongolia and China, not in North America as shown in many films.
Pterosaurs could fly and lived alongside dinosaurs, but they were not actually dinosaurs — they belonged to a separate group of reptiles.
A fossilised baby dinosaur found in China revealed what appears to be a belly-button scar, the first such evidence found in a dinosaur.
Many dinosaurs built nests and looked after their babies, much like modern birds. Fossilised nests have been found with eggs arranged in neat circles.
Yi qi was a small dinosaur from China that had bat-like wings made of stretched skin, a completely different flying design from other feathered dinosaurs.
Not all dinosaurs were huge! Parvicursor was only about 39 centimetres long — roughly the size of a pet cat.
Although Tyrannosaurus rex had famously short arms, each one could curl roughly 200 kilograms — stronger than most human weightlifters.
Giant sauropods like Brachiosaurus swallowed their food whole without chewing. They likely relied on stomach stones called gastroliths to help grind up tough plant material.
Scientists can now work out the colour of some dinosaurs by studying microscopic structures called melanosomes preserved in fossilised feathers. This is how we know Anchiornis was black, white, and reddish-brown.