Free quiz · 8 questions · Warm-up to Boss
Dinosaurs quiz
How well do you really know Dinosaurs? These 8 questions start easy and end with a Boss round. There are no multiple choice options: you type what you know, and every answer is checked against the key facts.
60 seconds a question, one 2x boost, and a leaderboard. Playing with friends writes a fresh set of Dinosaurs questions for your group.
The questions
- Warm-up
What’s the name of the field that digs into ancient life, and what kind of clues does it study?
Show the answer
- Paleontology (also spelled palaeontology)
- Studies fossils
- Uses fossils to learn about ancient life
- Medium
At dinosaur fossil sites, what clues suggest some dinosaurs lived in herds, and what group behavior do those clues point to?
Show the answer
- Fossil trackways show several dinosaurs moving together
- Bone beds contain several dinosaurs together
- The evidence suggests group travel or living
- Medium
What two Greek word-parts make up “dinosaur,” and what does each part mean?
Show the answer
- Deinos means terrible, mighty, or fearsome
- Sauros means lizard
- “Dinosaur” means “terrible lizard” or a close variant
- Medium
At the dinosaur buffet, how did a hadrosaur’s teeth differ from a meat-eater’s, and what job did each design do?
Show the answer
- Hadrosaurs had many tightly packed teeth forming dental batteries for grinding and crushing plants.
- Meat-eating dinosaurs typically had sharp, often serrated teeth for gripping and slicing meat.
- The different tooth shapes suited plant-eating versus meat-eating.
- Medium
Stegosaurus had a striking back-and-tail setup: how were its plates arranged, and what were its tail spikes called and used for?
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- Its large back plates stood in two alternating rows.
- Its tail spikes are commonly called a thagomizer.
- The spikes could be used for defense against predators.
- Hard
The Chicxulub crater is enormous and mostly buried: which country is it under, and which peninsula is it associated with?
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- It is under Mexico
- It is associated with the Yucatán Peninsula
- Part of it lies offshore beneath the Gulf of Mexico
- Hard
Which trackway measurement and body-size estimate help paleontologists estimate a dinosaur’s walking speed, and how are they combined?
Show the answer
- Paleontologists measure stride length from the footprints.
- They estimate hip height or leg length from the dinosaur’s body size.
- A longer stride relative to leg length generally indicates faster movement; the measurements can be used in a speed formula.
- Boss
Lucy turned up in the fossil record: was she a dinosaur or an early human relative, and what species was she?
Show the answer
- Lucy was an early human relative, not a dinosaur.
- Her species was Australopithecus afarensis.
- Her fossil is about 3.2 million years old.
How scoring works
- Each question has 2 or 3 key facts. Each one earns full, half or no credit, so a wrong answer scores zero.
- Later questions are worth more, fast answers earn a bonus, and great answers in a row build a streak.
- A famous myth or a clear factual error halves the points.
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