Dinosaur Facts for Kids

Let your children explore their dinosaur interest with these important and easy dinosaur facts for kids. At the end of this post, you will find printables and a video to go along with these facts.

Dinosaurs become an early interest for many young children. This interest often extends well into their years of elementary school. Some kids never lose their interest in dinosaurs, and later pursue a career in paleontology!

If you are looking for some easy-to-learn facts and tidbits of information, look below. We have five different categories of facts for you to look through. Some of them are separated by level of difficulty and some are separated so that you can easily find info about a few dinosaur types or fossils.

Fun and Easy Dinosaur Facts for Kids

These dinosaur facts for kids are worded very simply and perfect for those at a younger age! They are pretty interesting whether you are three or forty-three! Some of these facts are included in the Building Sentences: Dinosaur Facts printable resource.

Dinosaurs lived millions of years ago!
There were more than 700 different types of dinosaurs!
Some dinosaurs walked on land and some flew in the sky!
The Tyrannosaurus Rex has the strongest bite in all of history!
The dinosaurs went extinct because of a giant asteroid!
Dinosaurs that were meat eaters are called carnivorous!
An herbivore dinosaur eats plants.
Some dinosaurs lived to be almost 300 years old! That is a long time!
The biggest dinosaur was about 150 feet long!
Some of the smallest dinosaurs were the size of a chicken.
The biggest dinosaur eggs are almost 20 inches long!

These prehistoric creatures may be just a brief interest when they are young or may extend well into teenage years and adulthood.

Types of Dinosaurs

There are millions of years of history to absorb when learning about dinosaurs. Dinosaurs were on Earth for around 165 million years! Over those 165 million years, there were different time periods all with different dinosaurs. Scientists have discovered over 700 different dinosaur species through research and fossils. They believe there are even more than that out there to be discovered.

Here’s a brief list of some of the more popular type of dinosaurs. Each one is followed by a few fun facts. You can also grab these Building Sentences Dinosaur Facts worksheets for your kids.

Tyrannosaurus Rex – These are called a T-Rex by some people. When they were alive, they lived in North America. They walked on two legs and could weigh up to 8 tons!
Velociraptor – You have probably seen these in the Jurassic Park movies! They are usually thought of as big dinosaurs, but they were actually the size of a turkey! The fossils of velociraptors were found in the Gobi Dessert.
Brachiosaurus – These dinosaurs lived in North America. These dinosaurs have long necks and a very tiny head. They weighed somewhere between 30 and 40 tons!
Stegosaurus – This type of dinosaur was a herbivore. Herbivorous dinosaurs only ate plants. They lived during the Jurassic Period and fossils have been found in different parts of the world. They were large and often weighted around 5 tons. While these were very large, their brains were very small!
Triceratops – This type of dinosaur lived at the end of the Cretaceous Period. The triceratops had a large body and three large horns. They had horns to protect itself from the T-Rex! Triceratops were plant eating dinosaurs.
Spinosaurus – This bizarre looking animal was the biggest carnivore dinosaur on planet Earth.

Facts about Dinosaur Fossils

Fossils are the reason we know all we do about dinosaurs. Here are a few interesting facts about dinosaur fossils and what they have taught us since their discovery!

Dinosaur fossils have been found on every single continent! This means they lived everywhere!
Scientists that look for fossils are called paleontologists.
The first dinosaur fossils were discovered in North America! They found them in 1854 along the Missouri River.
The biggest dinosaur bone that also holds the largest fossil record ever found was a backbone! It weighed over a ton!
There was a dinosaur fossil that was found with both a Velociraptor and Protoceratops. They were attacking each other and scientists could see that in the fossil!
Paleontologists have discovered many dinosaur footprint fossils. The oldest ones are 249 million years old!

Take a virtual field trip or visit a local museum to let your kids learn more about the skeletal features and fossils of dinosaurs. A fun field trip like that would allow the kids to immerge themselves into the age of the dinosaurs. Kids love seeing the size of a t. rex and learning fun stegosaurus facts.

Fun Dinosaur Facts

These dinosaur facts for kids are still worded in a way that is easy to grasp for young minds, but they included a little more information than the first category. While these provide a lot of amazing information about dinosaurs, there is still so much to learn. These facts and tidbits will give you and your children a little foundation when it comes to understanding the wide world of dinosaurs!

Dinosaurs lived a very long time ago. The last dinosaurs were on Earth 66 million years ago. They were on Earth for about 165 million years.
Time on Earth is split into different Eras. Dinosaurs lived during the Mesozoic Era.
The Mesozoic Era or the “Age of the Dinosaurs” is split into three different periods. They are called the Triassic, Jurassic, and Cretaceous Periods.
Different dinosaurs were alive during the different periods. The dinosaurs that were alive during the Triassic period were different than the dinosaurs that were alive during the Jurassic period.
The word dinosaur is made from two Greek words. “Dino” means terrible. “Saurus” means lizard. So, they obviously thought a dinosaur was a big, terrible lizard!
A man named Sir Richard Owen was the one who came up with the name for dinosaurs!

Fascinating Facts about Dinosaurs

There is an endless amount of information both young and old can learn about dinosaurs. Because all this amazing information exists, it can be difficult to break facts and information down properly. Children are capable of learning and understanding so much more than we think, but some dinosaur history is long-winded and complicated!

The largest dinosaur was called an Argentinosaurus. It weighed almost as much as twenty elephants!
The Tyrannosaurus Rex is called the “king of the tyrant lizards”.
Micropachycephalosaurus is a dinosaur that lived around 80 million years ago! They have the longest dinosaur name!
Why did the dinosaurs go extinct? A giant asteroid hit earth! The asteroid changed Earth and made it difficult for the dinosaurs to stay alive. This was a mass extinction event.
Carnivorous dinosaurs ate meat. These types of dinosaurs typically walked on two feet. This let them catch their food with their hands!
Dinosaurs that were plant eaters are called herbivorous. Herbivore dinosaurs traveled in large groups. This was to help keep them safe from carnivorous dinosaurs.
Birds are closely descended from dinosaurs. They are even called Avian Dinosaurs.
A Tyrannosaurus Rex is more closely related to a chicken than it is a Stegosaurus!
The tallest dinosaur ever was a Sauroposeidon. It looks similar to a Brachiosaurus and lived during the Cretaceous Period.
The oldest known dinosaur is one called Nyasasaurus Parringtoni. These fossils are nearly 243 million years old!

Dinosaur Printables and Video

Congrats! If you made it this far, you are here to use your kids’ dinosaur interest as a fun learning opportunity.

Here, at Little Learning Corner, we’ve been building our Facts for Kids collection with content and printable activities you can do with your PreK-2nd grade kids.