Random Dinosaur Generator

How to Use the Random Dinosaur Generator

1. Choose the Triassic, Jurassic or Cretaceous, or any period.
2. Filter by herbivore, carnivore or omnivore.
3. Press Pick dinosaurs for a new draw.
4. Read the name meaning, period, diet and where fossils were found.

Press Pick dinosaurs to draw random dinosaurs from a list of 85 real, scientifically named species. The first pick shows what its name means, the part of the Mesozoic Era it lived in, its diet, its group and where its fossils have been found. Famous species also get a short, well-documented fact.

Use the filters to narrow the draw by period, diet, group or the continent where fossils were found. Tick the guessing game box to hide the names and guess from the clues, or tick No repeats to work through every matching dinosaur before any comes back.

The Three Periods of the Dinosaur Age

Dinosaurs lived during the Mesozoic Era, which is split into three periods. The dates below follow the International Commission on Stratigraphy time scale, rounded to the nearest million years.

Tyrannosaurus lived closer in time to us than to Stegosaurus. Stegosaurus died out around 145 million years ago or earlier, while Tyrannosaurus lived until 66 million years ago, a gap of roughly 80 million years.

How the Random Pick Works

The generator filters the list, shuffles the matches with your browser's cryptographic random source using the Fisher-Yates method, and shows the first ones. Every matching dinosaur has the same chance.

Worked example: drawing 3 from all 85 gives each a 3 ÷ 85 = 3.5% chance. Filter to the 5 Triassic dinosaurs and draw 1, and each has a 1 ÷ 5 = 20.0% chance.

Dinosaur Groups and Diets

• Theropods walked on two legs and include nearly all meat eaters, from Compsognathus to Tyrannosaurus. Birds evolved from this group.
• Sauropods and relatives were long-necked plant eaters, including the largest land animals ever found.
• Ornithopods were plant eaters such as Iguanodon and the duck-billed hadrosaurs.
• Ceratopsians had beaks, frills and often horns, like Triceratops.
• Armored dinosaurs include stegosaurs with plates and spikes and ankylosaurs with bony armor and tail clubs.

The list has 49 herbivores, 30 carnivores and 6 omnivores. Diet is inferred from teeth, jaws and stomach contents, so a few species are debated.

Animals That Were Not Dinosaurs

Pterosaurs such as Pteranodon, marine reptiles such as plesiosaurs and mosasaurs, and Dimetrodon are often grouped with dinosaurs, but none of them are dinosaurs, so they are not in this generator. Name meanings come from the Greek and Latin roots chosen by the scientists who described each species. Learn more from the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History.

How Dinosaurs Get Their Names

Every dinosaur has a scientific name, usually built from Greek or Latin roots. Many describe a feature: Triceratops means three-horned face and Ankylosaurus means fused lizard. Others honor a place, such as Albertosaurus for Alberta or Nigersaurus for Niger, and some honor a person, such as Herrerasaurus for Victorino Herrera, the farmer who found it.

A few names tell a story. Oviraptor, the egg seizer, was named because scientists first thought it was stealing eggs, before later finds showed its relatives sitting on their own nests. Irritator was named for the frustration its describers felt after discovering that the skull had been altered with plaster. The name stays even when the idea behind it turns out to be wrong.

Dinosaurs on Every Continent

Dinosaur fossils have been found on all seven continents, including Antarctica, where Cryolophosaurus lived when the land was warmer and farther from the pole. Use the continent filter to explore regional faunas, such as the giant sauropods of Argentina or the feathered dinosaurs of China.

Frequently asked questions