Dinosaur coloring pages

Free printable dinosaur coloring pages show real dinosaurs for every age.

These free printable dinosaur coloring pages show real animals, from a chunky toddler Stegosaurus to a realistic Brachiosaurus forest for adults. Toddlers get easy, simple shapes. Kids get cute dinosaurs, real species and busy scenes. Adults get realistic fossils, forests and fine patterns, and seniors get bold, calm scenes. Along the way come the real sizes of each dinosaur, which animals are not dinosaurs at all, and what fossils say about dinosaur colors.

The easiest dinosaurs are the best place to start.

Easy and simple dinosaur coloring pages suit toddlers and preschoolers.

The easiest dinosaurs have one big, rounded body and few small parts. That is why the Little Dinosaur, the Long Neck Dinosaur and the Simple Stegosaurus work so well for small hands. The Baby Dinosaur is bold and chunky, with wide spaces a thick crayon fills fast.

The Dinosaur Egg and Dinosaur Footprints are even simpler, and they are good for counting. The Dinosaur and Volcano and Flying Pterosaur add one more shape. For more ideas at this age, our preschool coloring pages cover many other subjects. Older kids soon want dinosaurs with a bit more going on.

Cute dinosaur coloring pages for kids mix real species with party hats and skateboards.

Kids can meet real dinosaurs one at a time. There is a Triceratops, a Stegosaurus, an Ankylosaurus, a feathered Raptor and a Spinosaurus wading through water. The Hatching Dinosaurs burst out of their eggs, and the Dinosaur Family shows a mother with two babies.

Then there are the just-for-fun sheets. The Skateboarding Dinosaur wears a helmet. The Dinosaur Birthday blows out candles, and the Dinosaur Astronaut floats past a planet. The Christmas Dinosaur stands by a tree in a Santa hat. For busier scenes, try Volcano Valley, the Prehistoric Landscape or the Dinosaur Dig, where a young fossil hunter brushes off a skull. Once kids know the names, they usually ask how big each dinosaur really was.

Which dinosaurs are on these coloring pages, and how big were they?

The sheets show Stegosaurus, Triceratops, Spinosaurus, Ankylosaurus, a raptor and long-necked Brachiosaurus. The Natural History Museum in London gives their real sizes in its Dino Directory. Brachiosaurus reached about 22 metres long. Spinosaurus measured about 14 metres, longer than any other known meat-eating dinosaur.

Stegosaurus and Triceratops were each about 9 metres long, and Ankylosaurus about 8. Velociraptor was only about 1.8 metres long and weighed about 7 kg. Put the Brachiosaurus Forest next to the Raptor, and the difference is huge. A few animals on the sheets are missing from that list for a good reason.

Pterosaurs and sea reptiles are not dinosaurs, but birds are.

The Natural History Museum lists pterosaurs, ichthyosaurs, plesiosaurs, mosasaurs and Dimetrodon among animals often wrongly called dinosaurs. Dinosaurs stood with their back legs straight under the body, and none of those groups did. So the Flying Pterosaur, Pterosaurs over the Sea and Sea Reptile show animals that lived alongside dinosaurs.

The same museum says dinosaurs ruled the land for over 140 million years and mostly died out about 66 million years ago. One group survived: birds are living dinosaurs. The sheets also span very different times. Stegosaurus and Brachiosaurus lived 152 to 145 million years ago, while Triceratops and Ankylosaurus lived 68 to 66 million years ago. That deep past is what the grown-up sheets bring to life.

Realistic dinosaur coloring pages for adults bring fossils, forests and fine patterns.

The Brachiosaurus Forest shows a long neck rising through tall trees. In the Dinosaur Museum, two visitors look up at a giant skeleton. The Pterosaurs over the Sea glide over rocky cliffs, and the Dinosaurs at Sunset walk in a long-necked herd. The Dinosaur Portrait Zentangle is a huge meat-eater's head filled with tiny patterns.

The Dinosaur Pattern Zentangle packs a whole page with patterned dinosaurs and eggs. The Dinosaur Mandala rings a dinosaur scene with leaves, and our mandala coloring pages have many more circles like it. The Dinosaur Friends, Jungle Dinosaurs and Dinosaur and Fern are cute but detailed. For a cozy mood, try the Dinosaur Campout, Dinosaur Bedroom or Dinosaur Cafe, and find more scenes like them among our cozy coloring pages. Quick bold pages for adults include the Stegosaurus, Dinosaur Skeleton and Dinosaur Tea Time. Bold lines suit older colorers too.

Dinosaur coloring pages for seniors keep outlines bold and scenes calm.

In Dinosaurs at the River, a small herd drinks side by side. The Dinosaur Under a Tree reads a book in the shade of a palm. Both have bold lines and open spaces.

They work well in a library or care home group, where dinosaurs are a subject every generation shares. Whoever colors them soon asks the same question: what color should a dinosaur be?

What color were dinosaurs, and how do you color one?

For most species, nobody knows. Fossils show that some dinosaurs were ginger, black, gray, white, reddish brown or shiny. The clues are melanosomes, tiny pigment parts kept in some fossil feathers and skin. Long, sausage-shaped ones make black and gray in living birds. Round ones make reddish shades.

In 2010, a team from China and the UK reported in the journal Nature that Sinosauropteryx had a ginger and white striped tail, as the Australian Museum describes. Later studies found Anchiornis patterned like a magpie and Microraptor with a dark sheen like a raven. Riley Black, writing for the Natural History Museum of Utah in 2022, explains that Psittacosaurus and the armored Borealopelta were darker on top and lighter underneath. That pattern helps hide an animal from predators. The method cannot detect yellows, so no fossil yet proves any dinosaur was green.

A realistic page can follow that evidence. Color the back darker and the belly lighter, in reddish browns and grays, and try a striped tail. With colored pencils, build the dark back in two light layers. With paint, lay the back first and blend lighter toward the belly. Cartoon sheets suit bright, made-up colors just as well. A finished dinosaur is also the start of more play.

A colored dinosaur page becomes a size lesson, a timeline or a puppet.

Size makes an easy first lesson. At about 22 metres, Brachiosaurus was about 12 times longer than Velociraptor, so the two sheets side by side start a real comparison. Sorting finished pages into older Jurassic dinosaurs, like Stegosaurus, and later Cretaceous ones, like Triceratops, makes a first timeline.

Naming games work too. The Natural History Museum describes a Triceratops frill nearly a metre across, a Spinosaurus sail about 1.5 metres tall and an Ankylosaurus tail club. Kids can point to each one on their sheets. A colored dinosaur glued to card and taped to a stick becomes a puppet. Print it on cardstock and it holds up to a whole puppet show.

From a chunky toddler Stegosaurus to a realistic Brachiosaurus forest, these free printable dinosaur coloring pages show real animals for every age. Pick an easy, cute or realistic sheet, and color it from fossil clues or pure imagination.