Dinosaurs Facts for Kids
Roar-some facts about dinosaurs
Fossilised dinosaur dung, called coprolites, can reveal exactly what a dinosaur ate. A T. rex coprolite found in Canada was enormous — about 44 centimetres long — and contained crushed bone fragments proving it swallowed huge chunks of its prey whole.
Theropod dinosaurs related to birds likely had excellent colour vision similar to modern birds, which can see into the ultraviolet range invisible to humans. This may have made the colourful feathers of male dinosaurs even more spectacular during courtship displays.
Some fossil evidence suggests that young sauropod dinosaurs may have lived separately from the adults, perhaps because the two groups ate different vegetation at different heights. Juveniles may have fed on low-growing plants while adults reached high into the tree canopy.
The mass extinction that ended the age of the dinosaurs wiped out approximately 75% of all species on Earth, not just the dinosaurs. Mammals, birds, and many other groups also suffered massive losses, though they eventually recovered and diversified.
Concavenator was a large predatory dinosaur from Spain with a peculiar tall hump made of extended vertebrae just in front of its hips. Scientists are unsure whether this was used for fat storage, temperature regulation, or as a display structure.
The asteroid that struck Earth 66 million years ago released energy estimated to be around two million times greater than the most powerful nuclear bomb ever detonated. It triggered earthquakes, tsunamis, wildfires, and a years-long 'impact winter' that blocked out sunlight.
One of the most remarkable dinosaur fossils ever found shows a Velociraptor and a Protoceratops locked in combat, preserved in the moment of their struggle when a collapsing sand dune buried them both alive. This 'Fighting Dinosaurs' specimen was discovered in the Gobi Desert.
Lessemsaurus was one of the earliest known sauropod dinosaurs, living around 215 million years ago in what is now Argentina. Even at this early stage, sauropods were already developing the enormous body size that would come to define the group.
Palaeontologists who prepare fossils for display and study use fine dental picks, drills, and brushes to painstakingly remove rock from around bones — a process that can take thousands of hours for a single large specimen. The work requires extraordinary patience and skill.
Tyrannosaurus rex lived very close to the end of the dinosaur era, only about 2 million years before the asteroid impact. In geological terms, T. rex is closer in time to us than it was to Stegosaurus or Brachiosaurus, which lived over 80 million years earlier.