Cut it into chunks
Say the name slowly, one chunk at a time, like clapping out a word. Triceratops is try-SAIR-uh-tops. Stegosaurus is STEG-oh-SORE-us. Each chunk is easy on its own. The only trouble is that the whole name looks long.
Every dinosaur page on Peabody shows the name split into chunks like this, and Peabody can read it aloud to you.
Find the loud part
On our pages, the loud part of each chunk is written in capital letters. In veh-LOSS-ih-RAP-ter, the loudest chunk is LOSS, and RAP is a little loud too. Say the quiet chunks fast and light, and the loud ones long and strong, and the name starts to sound right.
Try it with tie-RAN-oh-SORE-us REX. Make the capital letters ring.
The Greek and Latin bits that repeat
Scientists name dinosaurs with very old Greek and Latin words, and the same few bits come back again and again. Learn them and you can read many names. The biggest one is saurus, which means lizard and is said SORE-us. Stegosaurus is roofed lizard, Brontosaurus is thunder lizard, and Spinosaurus is spine lizard.
Next, tops means face, and ceratops means horned face. Triceratops is three-horned face (tri is the same bit you hear in tricycle). And raptor means thief, so Velociraptor means swift thief.
Last, don means tooth. Iguanodon means iguana tooth, because its teeth looked like an iguana's. Pteranodon means toothless wing: the an in the middle means without, so it is a wing without teeth.
Names that tell a story
Many names describe something you could see. Parasaurolophus (PAIR-uh-sore-OL-oh-fus) means near crested lizard, and its crest was a hollow tube on its head. Pachycephalosaurus (PACK-ee-SEF-uh-loh-SORE-us) means thick-headed lizard, for the dome of solid bone on top of its head. Therizinosaurus means scythe lizard, after the long curved blade that farmers once used to cut grain, which looks like its claws.
Some names tell a place or a likeness. Argentinosaurus means Argentina lizard, because its bones were found in Argentina. Gallimimus means chicken mimic, because its neck bones reminded scientists of a chicken's.
For Big readers: why the names are Greek and Latin
Scientists in every country use the same old languages for names, so a scientist in Brazil and a scientist in Japan are talking about the same animal when they say Triceratops. Greek and Latin are no longer spoken day to day, so the meaning of a name does not drift over time.
A scientific name has two parts, like your first and last name: the group name (the genus) and the kind name (the species). Tyrannosaurus rex is the group Tyrannosaurus and the kind rex, which means king in Latin, and people often shorten it to T. rex. Names are not always perfect, either. Stegosaurus means roofed lizard because the first scientists thought its plates lay flat like roof tiles. Today scientists think the plates stood up, but the name stuck anyway.
Pick Big at the top to see the part for older readers.