Dinosaurs lived on Earth millions of years ago. They lived on Earth for a very long time but then something happened that killed all of them and they became extinct about 65 million years ago. The name dinosaur means ‘terrible lizard’.

Most dinosaurs were herbivores, which means they only ate plants. Dinosaurs like Diplodocus and Triceratops were herbivores. Only one group of dinosaurs ate meat and that was the theropods. Dinosaurs such as T-Rex, Albertosaurus and Raptors were theropods. The theropod dinosaurs were very scary and all the other dinosaurs had to protect themselves from them! They did this in lots of different ways, for example Diplodocus lived in groups, Triceratops had horns to fight off theropods and Stegosaurus had plates on its back to make itself harder to eat and spikes on it’s tail to fight scary dinosaurs off!

Dinosaurs lived at a time that was very different to now. The land looked very different and wasn’t split up into continents and countries. There were no humans living on Earth, which meant no buildings, no cars or planes and most of the animals and plants we have now weren’t living either! It was much warmer on Earth and there were no polar ice caps at the North and South Poles.

Scroll through the pictures to learn about the different time periods that the dinosaurs lived in or some of the dinosaurs that lived during the Mesozoic Era, or you can use the links below…