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🦕 Dinosaur trivia for kids

Every answer checked 31 October 2026. Free, no sign-up, nothing to download.

Dinosaur questions for three ages, checked against the Natural History Museum in London and Dinosaur National Monument: how many horns Triceratops had, which animals alive today are dinosaurs, what a trace fossil is and why pterosaurs are not dinosaurs at all.

🐣 Little round: ages 6–8 (grades K–2)

▶ Play it on this phone🖨️ Print cards and answer sheets
  1. 1.Velociraptor was about the size of which animal?
    • A a turkey
    • B an elephant
    • C a horse
  2. 2.What is the hot, melted rock under a volcano called?
    • A magma
    • B sand
    • C clay
  3. 3.How many horns did Triceratops have on its face?
    • A three
    • B one
    • C five
  4. 4.Which river carved the Grand Canyon?
    • A the Colorado River
    • B the Nile River
    • C the Mississippi River
  5. 5.What did Stegosaurus have standing up along its back?
    • A bony plates
    • B soft fur
    • C big wings
  6. 6.Where did nearly all dinosaurs live?
    • A on land
    • B high in the clouds
    • C deep in the sea
  7. 7.How many legs did T. rex walk on?
    • A two
    • B four
    • C six
  8. 8.What do we call bones or footprints from long ago saved in rock?
    • A crystals
    • B pebbles
    • C fossils
  9. 9.What did long-necked Diplodocus eat?
    • A plants
    • B other dinosaurs
    • C fish
  10. 10.Which animals alive today are dinosaurs?
    • A crocodiles
    • B birds
    • C lizards
🔑 Show the answers
  1. A: a turkey. Velociraptor was much smaller than many people picture. Source: Natural History Museum, London
  2. A: magma. When magma comes out onto the ground, we call it lava. Source: National Park Service
  3. A: three. Its name means three-horned face. Source: Natural History Museum, London
  4. A: the Colorado River. The river still flows along the bottom of the canyon today. Source: National Park Service
  5. A: bony plates. The plates grew in its skin, so they are often found apart from the skeleton. Source: Natural History Museum, London
  6. A: on land. Penguins are birds, so they are dinosaurs that swim in the sea. Source: Natural History Museum, London
  7. A: two. Its arms were tiny, only about one meter long, so it walked on its big back legs. Source: Natural History Museum, London
  8. C: fossils. Fossils can be the remains of a living thing or marks it left, like footprints. Source: Natural History Museum, London
  9. A: plants. Its long neck let it reach leaves high in trees and plants low on the ground. Source: Natural History Museum, London
  10. B: birds. Crocodiles are cousins of dinosaurs, but only birds are dinosaurs. Source: Natural History Museum, London

🦊 Middle round: ages 9–11 (grades 3–5)

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  1. 1.Birds today come from which group of dinosaurs?
    • A sauropods
    • B theropods
    • C ceratopsians
  2. 2.Near Grand Canyon Village, about how deep is the canyon from rim to river?
    • A about one mile
    • B about 100 feet
    • C about 10 miles
  3. 3.The duck-billed dinosaur Maiasaura has a name that means what?
    • A good mother lizard
    • B three-horned face
    • C fast thief lizard
  4. 4.What instrument records the shaking of an earthquake?
    • A a barometer
    • B a seismograph
    • C a thermometer
  5. 5.Which scientist made up the name for dinosaurs in 1842?
    • A Richard Owen
    • B Charles Darwin
    • C Earl Douglass
  6. 6.What did Iguanodon have on the end of each hand?
    • A a big thumb spike
    • B a sticky pad
    • C a long feather
  7. 7.What do most scientists think was the main cause of the dinosaurs dying out?
    • A mammals eating their eggs
    • B a giant flood
    • C an asteroid hitting Earth
  8. 8.Fossil footprints and fossil dinosaur poo are what kind of fossils?
    • A trace fossils
    • B living fossils
    • C body fossils
  9. 9.What body feature sets dinosaurs apart from other reptiles like lizards?
    • A legs straight under the body
    • B scaly skin
    • C laying eggs
  10. 10.Dinosaur National Monument is in two states. In which one can you see its dinosaur fossils?
    • A Wyoming
    • B Utah
    • C Colorado
🔑 Show the answers
  1. B: theropods. Theropods walked on two legs, like T. rex and Velociraptor. Source: National Park Service
  2. A: about one mile. That is about 5,000 feet straight down from the South Rim. Source: National Park Service
  3. A: good mother lizard. Maiasaura nested in big groups, and parents may have cared for their babies. Source: Natural History Museum, London
  4. B: a seismograph. It draws a zig-zag line called a seismogram. Source: U.S. Geological Survey
  5. A: Richard Owen. He used three British fossils, including Iguanodon and Megalosaurus, to name the group. Source: Natural History Museum, London
  6. A: a big thumb spike. Scientists think it may have used the spike to defend itself. Source: Natural History Museum, London
  7. C: an asteroid hitting Earth. It happened about 66 million years ago, and birds were the only dinosaurs to survive. Source: Natural History Museum, London
  8. A: trace fossils. Body fossils are the actual remains, like bones, teeth and shells. Source: Natural History Museum, London
  9. A: legs straight under the body. Lizards and crocodiles have legs that sprawl out to the sides. Source: Natural History Museum, London
  10. B: Utah. Visitors can see and touch real fossils at the park's Wall of Bones. Source: National Park Service

🦉 Big round: ages 12 and up (grades 6 and up)

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  1. 1.Velociraptor walked on how many toes of each foot?
    • A two
    • B four
    • C three
  2. 2.Which is Earth's thickest layer, at about 2,900 kilometers?
    • A the crust
    • B the mantle
    • C the inner core
  3. 3.Oviraptor's name means egg thief. Whose eggs was it actually found with?
    • A Protoceratops eggs
    • B its own eggs
    • C crocodile eggs
  4. 4.The Challenger Deep, the deepest known part of the ocean, lies in which trench?
    • A the Mariana Trench
    • B the Puerto Rico Trench
    • C the Aleutian Trench
  5. 5.Which animals were the first with backbones to fly by flapping their wings?
    • A pterosaurs
    • B bats
    • C birds
  6. 6.Which paleontologist found the Carnegie Quarry in Utah in 1909?
    • A Barnum Brown
    • B Earl Douglass
    • C Richard Owen
  7. 7.Birds have bird-like hips, but scientists group them with which dinosaurs?
    • A the flying pterosaurs
    • B the bird-hipped ornithischians
    • C the lizard-hipped saurischians
  8. 8.The Morrison Formation, where Dinosaur National Monument's fossils come from, dates from which time?
    • A the Late Cretaceous
    • B the Late Jurassic
    • C the Early Triassic
  9. 9.Dinosaurs, pterosaurs and crocodiles all belong to which larger reptile group?
    • A the synapsids
    • B the amphibians
    • C the archosaurs
  10. 10.What is the most common way a dinosaur bone turns into a fossil?
    • A evaporation
    • B erosion
    • C petrification
🔑 Show the answers
  1. A: two. It held its curved sickle claw up off the ground, so its tracks show no claw marks. Source: Natural History Museum, London
  2. B: the mantle. NASA compares the hot rock of the mantle to thick, slow-moving caramel. Source: NASA
  3. B: its own eggs. Some oviraptorid fossils were found sitting on their nests, keeping their eggs safe. Source: Natural History Museum, London
  4. A: the Mariana Trench. It is about 10,935 meters deep, in the western Pacific Ocean. Source: NOAA National Ocean Service
  5. A: pterosaurs. Pterosaurs were flying reptiles, not dinosaurs, and appeared about 215 million years ago. Source: Natural History Museum, London
  6. B: Earl Douglass. His first find there was eight connected tailbones of an Apatosaurus. Source: National Park Service
  7. C: the lizard-hipped saurischians. The hip names were chosen before scientists knew birds are dinosaurs. Source: National Park Service
  8. B: the Late Jurassic. Diplodocus, Allosaurus and Stegosaurus all lived in the Late Jurassic. Source: National Park Service
  9. C: the archosaurs. Archosaurs first appeared about 251 million years ago, near the start of the Triassic. Source: Natural History Museum, London
  10. C: petrification. Water seeps into buried bone and leaves minerals behind, turning it to stone. Source: Natural History Museum, London

For the host

Expect an argument about birds. The answer really is that birds are dinosaurs, and the note says why.

  • Read each question and its three answers aloud, or press ▶ Play and Peabody reads them; a tap shows the answer, a line about it and where it comes from.
  • On a phone, pass it round: one question per team, a star for each right answer. On a laptop or a TV, press 📺 Big screen.
  • On paper, print the cards, one answer sheet per team and the key on its own page.

Where these questions come from

Each question was written by Peabody in its own words and checked against one page, named under its answer. The pages we used for these rounds:

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