Dinosaurs Facts for Kids
Roar-some facts about dinosaurs
Fossil evidence shows that dinosaurs suffered from infections, arthritis, cancer, and even broken bones that healed. Their health problems were surprisingly similar to those of modern animals.
Massive trackways of sauropod footprints found in places like Texas and Argentina suggest these giant dinosaurs travelled in herds, with younger individuals protected in the centre of the group.
Allosaurus was one of the top predators of the Jurassic period — millions of years before T. rex appeared. It was about 9 metres long and hunted large plant-eaters.
By analysing the ratios of different isotopes in dinosaur teeth and bones, scientists can determine what they ate, what temperature their bodies were, and even what the climate was like when they lived.
Stegosaurus and T. rex never met — Stegosaurus went extinct about 80 million years before T. rex even appeared. In fact, we live closer in time to T. rex than T. rex did to Stegosaurus!
Dinosaurs lived on every continent on Earth, including Antarctica. When dinosaurs first appeared, all the continents were joined together in one supercontinent called Pangaea, but they gradually drifted apart during the dinosaur age.
Although Tyrannosaurus rex had tiny arms, they were actually very powerful — each one could lift around 180 kilograms. Scientists are still debating what the arms were used for, but they may have helped the T. rex get up from the ground.
Sauropod dinosaurs like Brachiosaurus and Diplodocus had some of the smallest brains relative to their enormous body size of any animal that has ever lived. Their brains were roughly the size of a tennis ball, yet their bodies could weigh 50 tonnes.
Many dinosaurs were covered in feathers, not just scales. Fossils found in China show that even large predatory dinosaurs such as Yutyrannus had long, bristle-like feathers covering their entire body.
The real Velociraptor was roughly the size of a large turkey, not the human-sized monster shown in Jurassic Park. The terrifying creature in those films was actually based on a different dinosaur called Deinonychus.