Dinosaur Coloring Pages

A T. rex drawn for a four-year-old should look friendly, and the ones here do. Each of these free dinosaur coloring pages sets its animal in its own prehistoric landscape of ferns, palm trees, rivers, waterfalls and the odd erupting volcano. The cartoon style keeps round eyes and thick outlines, and the jungle scenes still hold an older child's attention for a long while.

The herd, sorted by habitat and habit:

• Meat eaters: T. rex, raptors in packs, a spinosaurus with its sail, a dilophosaurus and a horned carnotaurus.
• Plant eaters: triceratops, stegosaurus, ankylosaurus, parasaurolophus, iguanodon, pachycephalosaurus and long-necked dinosaurs.
• Babies and eggs: a triceratops with its baby, nests of eggs and a hatchling beside a hollow tree.
• Sky and sea: a pterodactyl over a nest, plesiosaurs and an ichthyosaur over a coral reef.
• Big jungle scenes where several species share the page.

T. rex dinosaur coloring pages

Tyrannosaurus rex lived at the very end of the age of dinosaurs, about 68 to 66 million years ago, in what is now western North America. Its name means "tyrant lizard king". It had a huge head, strong legs and those famous tiny arms with two fingers each.

In the collection, a smiling T. rex stands on rocky ground and in a forest of ferns, another roars beside an erupting volcano, two tyrannosaurs peer out from jungle vines, and one stands next to a much smaller dinosaur. Kids who only want the king of the dinosaurs will find a whole page of them in the T rex coloring pages.

A fact that surprises adults as much as kids: T. rex lived closer in time to us than to Stegosaurus. Stegosaurus had been gone for roughly 80 million years when T. rex appeared.

Raptor dinosaur coloring pages

The raptors here run in packs, through a forest, across rocky ground, along a winding river and into a jungle clearing. Two more hide beneath a coiled vine. Pack scenes suit siblings, who can each claim a raptor on the same sheet.

The real Velociraptor was much smaller than the movie version, about the size of a turkey, and it was covered in feathers. Fossil arm bones show the bumps where long feathers were anchored, just like on a bird's wing. Older kids can add a fringe of feathers along the arms of any raptor before coloring, which turns a cartoon into something a paleontologist would nod at.

If feathers lead the conversation to birds, the bird coloring pages and the turkey coloring pages make a good next print.

What color were dinosaurs, really?

For most of them, nobody knows. Bones fossilize, skin color usually does not. Green is a habit from old books, not a fact, so a purple stegosaurus with orange plates is just as right.

There are a few real answers. In feathered fossils, scientists have found melanosomes, the tiny cell parts that hold pigment, and compared their shapes with those of living birds:

• Sinosauropteryx, a small feathered dinosaur from China, had a ginger and white striped tail.
• Microraptor was black with a glossy sheen, a bit like a crow or a starling.
• Plates, crests and frills were probably for show, and display features in living animals tend to be bright.

A palette that always works

1. Pick one color for the body.
2. Pick a second for the plates, spikes, stripes or spots.
3. Color the belly a shade lighter than the back, so the dinosaur looks round.
4. Leave volcano smoke white or pale gray, and give the lava a red and orange top.

The parasaurolophus with stripes and the striped iguanodon already have the pattern drawn in, so they are an easy place to try two tones.

Stegosaurus, triceratops and other plant-eating dinosaurs

The gentle giants make up a big part of the collection.

• Stegosaurus walks through the jungle under a low sun and stands among trees and rocks. Its back plates are the fun part: color them a different shade from the body.
• Triceratops walks with its baby in front of a volcano and stands guard over a nest. Its name means "three-horned face".
• Ankylosaurus swings its clubbed tail among ferns and butterflies.
• Parasaurolophus has a long hollow crest that many scientists think worked like a horn for calling.
• Long-necked dinosaurs drink from a pond, eat leafy branches and graze in a valley below snowy mountains.

The ferns and palm trees in these scenes are worth a second green. For more leaves, the plant coloring pages and forest coloring pages carry on, and the butterflies that drift over several sheets have their own butterfly coloring pages.

The dilophosaurus frill

The dilophosaurus here spreads a neck frill, the way it does in the 1993 film Jurassic Park. That frill, and the venom spitting, were invented for the movie. The real animal had two thin crests on its head and no known frill, which makes a nice trivia question for a dinosaur fan.

Dinosaur egg coloring pages and baby dinosaurs

All dinosaurs hatched from eggs, and some of the sheets show it: a triceratops beside a nest of eggs, a pterodactyl flying over a nest by a river, and a little hatchling next to an iguanodon and a pachycephalosaurus.

Those egg pages open a good classroom conversation, because birds are living dinosaurs. Every chicken in a backyard is a distant relative of T. rex, which the chicken coloring pages make easy to show side by side.

One more surprise for older kids: pterosaurs, plesiosaurs and ichthyosaurs lived alongside the dinosaurs but were not dinosaurs. The sea reptiles go well with the ocean coloring pages and shark coloring pages.

Easy dinosaur coloring pages for preschool

For ages three to five, pick a single dinosaur with a pond, a cloud or a few rocks around it. A lone spinosaurus by the river or a smiling T. rex on bare stones is the kind of sheet that Quick to color lines up.

• A plesiosaur swimming above coral
• A spinosaurus eating a fish by a river
• A spinosaurus walking by a stream

For older kids and patient adults, the jungle scenes pack palm fronds, vines, ferns and volcano smoke around the animals. Raptor packs in a clearing and stegosaurs among the palms rise to the top when Lots of detail is on.

• A long-necked dinosaur and a baby triceratops
• A long-necked dinosaur eating leaves
• A long-necked dinosaur eating a branch

In a preschool class, give each child a different species instead of copies of the same drawing. Each child colors a dinosaur and traces its name underneath, then the class sorts the pages on the floor, plant eaters on one side and meat eaters on the other. When the class moves on from dinosaurs, the preschool coloring pages offer other subjects drawn just as plainly.

Dinosaur party and holiday ideas

For a dinosaur birthday, print a mix of species and let each guest pick one at the table.

• Tape the finished pages along a wall in the order the animals lived, Stegosaurus first and T. rex last, for a timeline the guests made themselves.
• Staple a few sheets into a small dinosaur coloring book for each party bag.
• Keep one of the happy birthday coloring pages, the one with a cake, for the child whose party it is.

For a dinosaur Christmas, the T rex collection linked above has a T. rex decorating a tree topped with a star and one wearing a Santa hat with a gift in its arms. Any other species can join in. Pencil a Santa hat and a string of lights onto it, go over them in marker, then color. Trees, stockings and reindeer for the rest of December are in the Christmas coloring pages.

Children who love big scaly creatures usually move on to the dragon coloring pages or Godzilla coloring pages, and the animal coloring pages cover everything still alive today.

Printing a herd of dinosaur pages

The jungle and volcano scenes are line work on white, so even a cheap home printer gets through a whole herd. The sheets come as free 300 dpi PDFs in A4 size. On A4 paper they print as they are; on Letter paper, fit to page keeps the long tails of the sauropods from running off the edge.

To give each child a different species, press Add to pack beneath every species you want, and the class set arrives as a single file. Our printing guide pictures those settings. Homes, classrooms and parties can print these original dinosaurs at no cost.