How tall are you next to a dinosaur?
Films get dinosaur scale wrong in both directions. A velociraptor was turkey-sized; a brachiosaurus could look into a fourth-floor window.
Almost exactly an average man (US)
1.75 m is taller than 1 of the 7 references on this page.
Reference figures are measurements and are rounded; the unit conversion behind them is exact.
| Reference | Size | Yours ÷ theirs | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| velociraptor | 0.5 m | 3.5× | At the hip — about the size of a turkey |
| average man (US) | 1.75 m | 0.999× | |
| triceratops | 3 m | 0.583× | |
| T. rex at the hip | 4 m | 0.438× | |
| T. rex head height | 5.2 m | 0.337× | |
| brachiosaurus | 12 m | 0.146× | |
| Argentinosaurus | 21 m | 1/12 | Length 35 m; height at the head |
Worth knowing
- A real velociraptor stood about 0.5 m at the hip and weighed 15 kg. The film versions were modelled on Deinonychus and then enlarged.
- T. rex held its spine roughly horizontal, so its hip height, about 4 m, matters more than the upright pose museums used until the 1990s.
Frequently asked
How do we know how tall a dinosaur was?
From limb bones. Leg-bone length scales predictably with hip height across living archosaurs, so a complete femur gives a good estimate even from a partial skeleton.
Was anything bigger than Argentinosaurus?
Possibly. Fragments attributed to Bruhathkayosaurus and Maraapunisaurus imply larger animals, but the material is lost or too incomplete to trust.