Loading page
About this tool
Explore 20 dinosaur species with search, filter, timeline view, size comparison, and detailed cards.
Dinosaur Explorer is a browsable reference card set for 20 well-known prehistoric animals — from Compsognathus to Brachiosaurus — with pronunciation, name meaning, diet, length, height, weight, habitat, range and five facts each. You can filter by period (Jurassic, Cretaceous), diet and size class, search by name, place each animal on a Mesozoic timeline spanning 252 to 66 million years ago, and see its height drawn against an average 1.8 m human. It is built for school projects and curious kids, not for taxonomic research.
Open Dinosaur Explorer on AltFTool — it loads instantly in your browser.
Type into the 'Search dinosaurs...' box or narrow the 20 species with the Period, Diet and Size dropdowns — Jurassic or Cretaceous, Carnivore or Herbivore, Small through Large.
Switch between Grid view and List view; the 'Geological timeline (millions of years ago)' strip draws the Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous to scale and plots the first six matches.
Open a card for its Length, Height, Weight, Habitat, Location and Lived-in-mya stats, a Size Comparison drawn against an average 1.8 m human, and five Fun Facts; 'Back to explorer' returns to the list.
Each card scales the animal against a 1.8 m human, so "27 m long" becomes something you can actually picture.
Period, diet and size class stack with the search box, so "large Cretaceous carnivores" is two clicks rather than a scroll through the whole list.
Parasaurolophus comes with how to say it and what the name means, which is usually the first thing a child asks.
Twenty species and close relatives: Tyrannosaurus, Triceratops, Velociraptor, Stegosaurus, Brachiosaurus, Pteranodon, Diplodocus, Ankylosaurus, Spinosaurus, Parasaurolophus, Allosaurus, Apatosaurus, Iguanodon, Pachycephalosaurus, Dilophosaurus, Carnotaurus, Compsognathus, Therizinosaurus, Deinonychus and Maiasaura.
The Triassic (252-201 million years ago), the Jurassic (201-145) and the Cretaceous (145-66), together making up the Mesozoic era. The timeline view draws all three to scale and marks each animal's span within them, which is why a Jurassic Stegosaurus and a Cretaceous T. rex sit far apart.
Each animal is drawn at its height relative to an average 1.8 m human standing beside it. Brachiosaurus is roughly three times that human, while Velociraptor is about a third — closer to a large turkey than to the film version.
No. The real animal was about 1.5 to 2.1 m long and weighed roughly 15 to 30 kg, so the film's human-sized raptors are closer to Deinonychus in scale. Sizes and dates here follow commonly cited published estimates, which paleontologists revise as new specimens are found.