Dinosaurs Quiz
T. rex, Triceratops, Velociraptor and the asteroid: 15 questions from the age of the dinosaurs.
Which dinosaur's name means tyrant lizard king?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
Tyrannosaurus rex
Tyrannosaurus comes from the Greek for tyrant lizard, and rex is Latin for king. Henry Fairfield Osborn named the species in 1905 from fossils collected in Montana by Barnum Brown.
T. rex had about 60 teeth, some the size of bananas, and a bite force estimated at around 35,000 newtons (8,000 pounds of force).
Which dinosaur is instantly recognizable by its three horns and large bony frill?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
Triceratops
Triceratops, meaning three-horned face, was a plant eater about 9 meters (30 feet) long that lived at the end of the Cretaceous alongside T. rex. Its frill may have served for display as well as defense.
Triceratops had a beak like a parrot and batteries of hundreds of teeth for shearing tough plants.
Which living animals are the direct descendants of dinosaurs?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
Birds
Birds evolved from small feathered theropod dinosaurs during the Jurassic, so scientists classify them as living dinosaurs. Crocodiles are relatives, but their line branched off before the dinosaurs appeared.
This means a chicken is more closely related to T. rex than T. rex was to Stegosaurus.
About how many years ago did the non-bird dinosaurs die out?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
About 66 million
The Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction about 66 million years ago wiped out around three quarters of species on Earth, including every dinosaur except the birds. A huge asteroid impact is the leading explanation.
Humans and dinosaurs never met: the first members of our genus, Homo, appeared only around 2 to 3 million years ago.
Which dinosaur had two rows of bony plates along its back and spikes on its tail?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
Stegosaurus
Stegosaurus lived in the late Jurassic, about 150 million years ago, and carried around 17 to 22 plates plus four tail spikes known as the thagomizer. Its brain was only about the size of a walnut.
The word thagomizer was coined in a 1982 Far Side cartoon by Gary Larson and was later adopted by paleontologists.
Which was the first of the three periods of the Mesozoic Era, the age of dinosaurs?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
Triassic
The Mesozoic ran from about 252 to 66 million years ago and is divided into the Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous periods. The earliest dinosaurs appeared in the Triassic, roughly 230 million years ago.
Despite the film's title, most of the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park, including T. rex and Velociraptor, actually lived in the Cretaceous.
What does the word dinosaur literally mean?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
Terrible lizard
The name combines the Greek deinos, meaning terrible or fearfully great, and sauros, meaning lizard. Ironically, dinosaurs were not lizards at all but a separate group of reptiles with legs held straight beneath the body.
Brontosaurus, by contrast, means thunder lizard, a name revived in 2015 after decades of being folded into Apatosaurus.
Which British scientist coined the term Dinosauria in 1842?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
Richard Owen
Anatomist Richard Owen recognized that Megalosaurus, Iguanodon and Hylaeosaurus shared distinctive features and grouped them together as Dinosauria. He later drove the founding of London's Natural History Museum.
Owen was a fierce opponent of Darwin's theory of evolution and clashed publicly with Darwin's supporters for years.
In which US state was Sue, the famous Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton, found in 1990?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
South Dakota
Fossil hunter Sue Hendrickson spotted the bones in a cliff near Faith, South Dakota, in August 1990. At about 90 percent complete, Sue is one of the most complete T. rex skeletons ever found.
After a legal battle over ownership, the Field Museum in Chicago bought Sue at auction in 1997 for more than 8 million dollars.
Which dinosaur, shown as a human-sized hunter in Jurassic Park, was really about the size of a turkey?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
Velociraptor
The real Velociraptor was about 2 meters (6.5 feet) long including the tail, stood roughly knee high and weighed around 15 kg (33 pounds), and it was covered in feathers. The film raptors were modeled on the larger Deinonychus.
Velociraptor fossils come from Mongolia, including a famous specimen preserved locked in combat with a Protoceratops.
Which group of flying reptiles lived alongside the dinosaurs but is not classified as dinosaurs?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
Pterosaurs
Pterosaurs, including Pterodactylus and the giant Quetzalcoatlus, were the first vertebrates to achieve powered flight. They were close cousins of dinosaurs on a separate branch of reptiles, while plesiosaurs, mosasaurs and ichthyosaurs lived in the sea.
Quetzalcoatlus had a wingspan of around 10 to 11 meters (33 to 36 feet), about the size of a small aircraft.
Which fossil, found in Germany in 1861, provided early evidence that birds evolved from dinosaurs?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
Archaeopteryx
Archaeopteryx had feathered wings like a bird but teeth, clawed fingers and a long bony tail like a reptile. Its discovery came just two years after Darwin's Origin of Species and was quickly seen as a transitional form.
Archaeopteryx was about the size of a raven and lived around 150 million years ago in what is now Bavaria.
The Chicxulub crater, linked to the extinction of the dinosaurs, lies in which country?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
Mexico
The crater, about 180 km (110 miles) wide, is buried beneath the Yucatán Peninsula and the adjacent Gulf of Mexico. It was formed by an asteroid roughly 10 km (6 miles) across striking the Earth.
The crater was first identified in the late 1970s by geophysicists prospecting for oil, years before anyone connected it to the extinction.
Which heavily armored dinosaur defended itself with a heavy club at the end of its tail?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
Ankylosaurus
Ankylosaurus was covered in bony plates called osteoderms and swung a tail club of fused bone that could have broken the leg of an attacking predator. It was one of the last dinosaurs, living at the very end of the Cretaceous.
Ankylosaurus shared western North America with T. rex and Triceratops about 68 to 66 million years ago.
Which dinosaur, named in 1824, was the first ever to be scientifically described?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
Megalosaurus
William Buckland described Megalosaurus, meaning great lizard, from bones found in Oxfordshire quarries, 18 years before the word dinosaur existed. Gideon Mantell's Iguanodon followed in 1825.
In 1854 sculptor Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins built a life-sized Megalosaurus for the Crystal Palace park in London, where it still stands today.
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All Science quizzes →About the Dinosaurs Quiz
Dinosaurs ruled the Earth for more than 160 million years, and they never really left: every sparrow and chicken is a living dinosaur. Tyrannosaurus rex had teeth the size of bananas, the real Velociraptor was a feathered hunter about the size of a turkey, and the asteroid that ended the Cretaceous left a crater 180 km wide beneath Mexico.
These 15 questions cover the famous species, the three periods of the Mesozoic, the great extinction and the fossil hunters who first put names to the bones. The early questions are easy for anyone who loved dinosaurs as a kid, the middle digs into real paleontology, and the closing questions on Megalosaurus and Archaeopteryx will separate the true dino fans. Fun for all ages.
You will find 15 multiple choice questions here, each with four options. Difficulty: Medium. Most people finish in about 6 minutes, and every answer comes with a short explanation and one extra fact worth keeping.
How to play
Read the question and pick one of the four answers. The correct answer is revealed straight away with a short explanation, then press Next question to keep going. At the end you get your score out of 15 and a full review of your round. Play again any time and the questions arrive in a fresh order. There is no timer and no account.
Good to know before you play
Is this dinosaur quiz suitable for kids?
Yes. The first half is friendly for children who know their T. rex from their Triceratops, while the second half gives adults and older students a real challenge.
Are birds really dinosaurs?
Yes. Birds evolved from small feathered theropod dinosaurs, so scientists classify them as living dinosaurs. One question covers exactly this.
Does the quiz include Jurassic Park?
Only as a reference point. One question reveals how different the real Velociraptor was from the movie version.
Answer key: all 15 questions with explanations
- Which dinosaur's name means tyrant lizard king?
Tyrannosaurus rex Tyrannosaurus comes from the Greek for tyrant lizard, and rex is Latin for king. Henry Fairfield Osborn named the species in 1905 from fossils collected in Montana by Barnum Brown. T. rex had about 60 teeth, some the size of bananas, and a bite force estimated at around 35,000 newtons (8,000 pounds of force). - Which dinosaur is instantly recognizable by its three horns and large bony frill?
Triceratops Triceratops, meaning three-horned face, was a plant eater about 9 meters (30 feet) long that lived at the end of the Cretaceous alongside T. rex. Its frill may have served for display as well as defense. Triceratops had a beak like a parrot and batteries of hundreds of teeth for shearing tough plants. - Which living animals are the direct descendants of dinosaurs?
Birds Birds evolved from small feathered theropod dinosaurs during the Jurassic, so scientists classify them as living dinosaurs. Crocodiles are relatives, but their line branched off before the dinosaurs appeared. This means a chicken is more closely related to T. rex than T. rex was to Stegosaurus. - About how many years ago did the non-bird dinosaurs die out?
About 66 million The Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction about 66 million years ago wiped out around three quarters of species on Earth, including every dinosaur except the birds. A huge asteroid impact is the leading explanation. Humans and dinosaurs never met: the first members of our genus, Homo, appeared only around 2 to 3 million years ago. - Which dinosaur had two rows of bony plates along its back and spikes on its tail?
Stegosaurus Stegosaurus lived in the late Jurassic, about 150 million years ago, and carried around 17 to 22 plates plus four tail spikes known as the thagomizer. Its brain was only about the size of a walnut. The word thagomizer was coined in a 1982 Far Side cartoon by Gary Larson and was later adopted by paleontologists. - Which was the first of the three periods of the Mesozoic Era, the age of dinosaurs?
Triassic The Mesozoic ran from about 252 to 66 million years ago and is divided into the Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous periods. The earliest dinosaurs appeared in the Triassic, roughly 230 million years ago. Despite the film's title, most of the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park, including T. rex and Velociraptor, actually lived in the Cretaceous. - What does the word dinosaur literally mean?
Terrible lizard The name combines the Greek deinos, meaning terrible or fearfully great, and sauros, meaning lizard. Ironically, dinosaurs were not lizards at all but a separate group of reptiles with legs held straight beneath the body. Brontosaurus, by contrast, means thunder lizard, a name revived in 2015 after decades of being folded into Apatosaurus. - Which British scientist coined the term Dinosauria in 1842?
Richard Owen Anatomist Richard Owen recognized that Megalosaurus, Iguanodon and Hylaeosaurus shared distinctive features and grouped them together as Dinosauria. He later drove the founding of London's Natural History Museum. Owen was a fierce opponent of Darwin's theory of evolution and clashed publicly with Darwin's supporters for years. - In which US state was Sue, the famous Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton, found in 1990?
South Dakota Fossil hunter Sue Hendrickson spotted the bones in a cliff near Faith, South Dakota, in August 1990. At about 90 percent complete, Sue is one of the most complete T. rex skeletons ever found. After a legal battle over ownership, the Field Museum in Chicago bought Sue at auction in 1997 for more than 8 million dollars. - Which dinosaur, shown as a human-sized hunter in Jurassic Park, was really about the size of a turkey?
Velociraptor The real Velociraptor was about 2 meters (6.5 feet) long including the tail, stood roughly knee high and weighed around 15 kg (33 pounds), and it was covered in feathers. The film raptors were modeled on the larger Deinonychus. Velociraptor fossils come from Mongolia, including a famous specimen preserved locked in combat with a Protoceratops. - Which group of flying reptiles lived alongside the dinosaurs but is not classified as dinosaurs?
Pterosaurs Pterosaurs, including Pterodactylus and the giant Quetzalcoatlus, were the first vertebrates to achieve powered flight. They were close cousins of dinosaurs on a separate branch of reptiles, while plesiosaurs, mosasaurs and ichthyosaurs lived in the sea. Quetzalcoatlus had a wingspan of around 10 to 11 meters (33 to 36 feet), about the size of a small aircraft. - Which fossil, found in Germany in 1861, provided early evidence that birds evolved from dinosaurs?
Archaeopteryx Archaeopteryx had feathered wings like a bird but teeth, clawed fingers and a long bony tail like a reptile. Its discovery came just two years after Darwin's Origin of Species and was quickly seen as a transitional form. Archaeopteryx was about the size of a raven and lived around 150 million years ago in what is now Bavaria. - The Chicxulub crater, linked to the extinction of the dinosaurs, lies in which country?
Mexico The crater, about 180 km (110 miles) wide, is buried beneath the Yucatán Peninsula and the adjacent Gulf of Mexico. It was formed by an asteroid roughly 10 km (6 miles) across striking the Earth. The crater was first identified in the late 1970s by geophysicists prospecting for oil, years before anyone connected it to the extinction. - Which heavily armored dinosaur defended itself with a heavy club at the end of its tail?
Ankylosaurus Ankylosaurus was covered in bony plates called osteoderms and swung a tail club of fused bone that could have broken the leg of an attacking predator. It was one of the last dinosaurs, living at the very end of the Cretaceous. Ankylosaurus shared western North America with T. rex and Triceratops about 68 to 66 million years ago. - Which dinosaur, named in 1824, was the first ever to be scientifically described?
Megalosaurus William Buckland described Megalosaurus, meaning great lizard, from bones found in Oxfordshire quarries, 18 years before the word dinosaur existed. Gideon Mantell's Iguanodon followed in 1825. In 1854 sculptor Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins built a life-sized Megalosaurus for the Crystal Palace park in London, where it still stands today.
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