• 100 story ideas
  • Checked October 2026

Dinosaur Story Ideas

Sixty start from one true thing, twenty from a fossil find, twenty from a dinosaur loose in town.

Dinosaur Story Ideas

Show all 100
  1. A Pachycephalosaurus with the thickest skull in the valley is the gentlest animal in it.True: the roof of its skull was bone almost 9 inches thick. Ends: he cracks hard seed pods for anyone who asks.
  2. A Parasaurolophus whose call comes out higher than the rest is asked to hum quietly.True: its long, hollow crest may have made its calls resonate. Ends: in fog, hers is the call a lost calf can find.
  3. A school borrows a cast of a skull, and a girl who is afraid of it is asked to measure the teeth.Find: each tooth is longer than her hand. Ends: by the tenth she is not afraid, and by the last she has named it.

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All 100 story ideas

Set in the Triassic 20

  • A Coelophysis who hates crowds is born into the biggest crowd in the valley. True: Coelophysis is one of the dinosaurs with the most skeletons found. Ends: he finds one quiet friend in it.
  • A Coelophysis wins every race in the valley and is asked to slow down so the others can play. True: Coelophysis was slender and a fast, agile runner. Ends: she runs backward, and it is nearly fair.
  • A Herrerasaurus is the fiercest dinosaur in her valley and still has to step aside for nearly everyone. True: in the Triassic, dinosaurs were not yet the animals in charge. Ends: she waits her turn at the river.
  • A Herrerasaurus wants to make friends with the small ones, who run whenever she comes near. True: Herrerasaurus was a meat-eater about 20 feet long. Ends: she lies down to look smaller, and one comes back.
  • A Lessemsaurus is too big to hide in any game of hide and seek. True: Lessemsaurus is estimated at 33 to 39 feet long. Ends: he becomes the hill the others hide behind.
  • A Liliensternus is the biggest meat-eater her forest has seen, and she is tired of being stared at. True: it is one of the largest meat-eaters known from Triassic Europe. Ends: a bigger stranger passes through.
  • A Melanorosaurus has lived all her life under one black mountain and wonders what is behind it. True: the name means Black Mountain lizard. Ends: behind it is another, with someone there wondering too.
  • A Panphagia is asked to bring one thing to the herd's feast and brings one of everything. True: the name Panphagia comes from words for all and to eat. Ends: nothing is left over.
  • A Plateosaurus hatchling cannot reach the leaves the grown-ups eat and tries everything lower down. True: Plateosaurus had a small head on a long, flexible neck. Ends: by the end of summer she can reach.
  • A Riojasaurus is the slowest walker in her herd and the only one who notices things. True: Riojasaurus was heavy and likely walked slowly on four legs. Ends: she is the one who finds the water.
  • A Saturnalia hatches on the noisiest day of the year and expects every day to be like it. True: Saturnalia is named for a festival; its bones were found at Carnival. Ends: she grows to like quiet.
  • A small dinosaur watches flying reptiles leave the cliff and wants a turn. True: pterosaurs, the first backboned animals to fly, appeared in the Triassic. Ends: she jumps off a log, twice.
  • A small Eoraptor decides she will be the first dinosaur that anyone remembers. True: few known dinosaurs are as early as Eoraptor. Ends: she is right, and never finds out.
  • A small Thecodontosaurus explores a crack in the rocks that nobody in the family will go near. True: its bones are mostly found in old cracks and caves filled with rock. Ends: it comes out at a beach.
  • A Staurikosaurus finds his way home each night by four bright stars, and one night clouds cover them. True: the name means Southern Cross lizard, after the stars. Ends: he waits, and the clouds move on.
  • A young dinosaur hears that all the land in the world is joined together and sets out to walk around it. True: in the Triassic the land was one supercontinent, Pangaea. Ends: he reaches the next river and calls it a start.
  • An Eodromaeus is up and running before the sun every morning and wonders why nobody else is. True: the name Eodromaeus means dawn runner. Ends: one morning a friend is waiting at the start.
  • An Eoraptor cannot decide what to have for lunch, and neither can his teeth. True: its teeth had several shapes, a sign it ate plants and meat. Ends: he has both, twice.
  • The smallest hunter in the forest, a Procompsognathus, is sent with a message through the tall ferns. True: Procompsognathus was lightly built and about 3 feet long. Ends: nobody sees her pass, as planned.
  • Two Plateosaurus argue over which of them stands taller on two legs. True: Plateosaurus walked on its two hind legs. Ends: a third, taller than both, looks down and says nothing.

Set in the Jurassic 20

  • A Brachiosaurus is the only one tall enough to see the storm coming, and nobody below believes her. True: it may have fed as high as 30 feet off the ground. Ends: she keeps the small ones dry, and next time they ask.
  • A Brontosaurus calf is afraid of thunder. True: Brontosaurus means thunder lizard. Ends: her mother stamps once, and the calf learns where thunder comes from.
  • A Camarasaurus thinks he is nobody special, because the plain is full of others just like him. True: in the rocks where it is found, no dinosaur is commoner. Ends: his mother finds him without looking twice.
  • A Ceratosaurus is proud of the horn on her nose and is asked every day what it is for. True: the horn on its snout was probably only for show. Ends: she says it is for starting conversations.
  • A Compsognathus rides on a long-neck's back to see where the herd is going. True: Compsognathus could grow to about the size of a chicken. Ends: to the sea, which is bigger than the long-neck.
  • A Dilophosaurus hatchling waits for her two crests to grow and checks the pond every morning. True: the name Dilophosaurus means two-crested lizard. Ends: they come in while she is busy with something else.
  • A Diplodocus is so long that her tail is still in yesterday's meadow when her head reaches today's. True: Diplodocus, about 80 feet, is one of the longest known from a whole skeleton. Ends: she waits for her tail.
  • A Dryosaurus is the fastest runner in the forest and has nobody to race. True: Dryosaurus was a quick, agile runner with a stiff tail for balance. Ends: she races her shadow and loses.
  • A Kentrosaurus would like a hug and has spikes on both shoulders and all the way down his tail. True: it had a long spike on each shoulder and more down its tail. Ends: a friend works out the one safe angle.
  • A Mamenchisaurus keeps losing track of her head, which gets to places long before the rest of her. True: its neck made up nearly half of its whole length. Ends: the head learns to wait.
  • A Mussaurus hatchling walks on four legs and watches the grown-ups walk on two. True: young Mussaurus walked on all fours, and the adults on two legs. Ends: the day he stands, he sees the valley.
  • A Mussaurus herd on the move keeps its youngest in the middle, and one keeps drifting to the edge. True: fossils of many ages found together suggest Mussaurus lived in herds. Ends: she spots the river first.
  • A Scutellosaurus counts the little shields on his back every night and always loses count. True: it had several hundred small bony plates from neck to tail. Ends: his sister counts and falls asleep.
  • A small Heterodontosaurus has tusks and cannot get anyone to take them seriously. True: it had three kinds of teeth, tusks among them. Ends: the tusks open seed cones, and now everyone is polite.
  • A Yi glides from tree to tree and has never yet landed on the branch she chose. True: Yi had wings of skin, something like a bat's, for gliding. Ends: the wrong branch has the better view.
  • A young Guanlong has the smallest crest in the family and hides it under a fern. True: the name means crown dragon, and the young had smaller crests. Ends: a hatchling with none asks for the fern.
  • A young Stegosaurus asks what his plates are for, and every grown-up gives a different answer. True: scientists have long debated what the plates of Stegosaurus were for. Ends: he decides they are for shade.
  • An Allosaurus cub is told he will be the top hunter of the plain, and he would rather be liked. True: Allosaurus was the most common large hunter where it lived. Ends: a hatchling naps in his shadow.
  • An Apatosaurus learns to crack her tail like a whip and cannot stop doing it at bedtime. True: its tail ended in a thin whip that may have made loud cracks. Ends: she gets the job of waking the herd.
  • An Archaeopteryx is too feathery for the dinosaurs and too toothy for anyone else. True: it had feathers and broad wings, and also teeth and a long bony tail. Ends: she starts a club of her own.

Set in the Cretaceous 20

  • A Citipati father will not leave his nest, even for the best berries of the year. True: Citipati fossils sit over their nests with arms spread round the eggs. Ends: a friend brings him the berries.
  • A Deinonychus keeps catching the big claw on her toe in roots, vines and other people's nests. True: the name means terrible claw, for a large curved claw on each foot. Ends: she finds it is good for climbing.
  • A Maiasaura comes back to a nesting ground of thousands and cannot tell which nest is hers. True: Maiasaura fed its young in the nest and lived in huge herds. Ends: her hatchlings know her step and call.
  • A Microraptor has four wings and cannot get all four to agree on a direction. True: Microraptor had long feathers on its arms and on its legs. Ends: he lets the back pair steer.
  • A Nigersaurus loses a tooth and worries, until she is told how many more are on the way. True: it had more than 500 teeth and replaced each about every 14 days. Ends: she stops counting at lunch.
  • A Pachycephalosaurus with the thickest skull in the valley is the gentlest animal in it. True: the roof of its skull was bone almost 9 inches thick. Ends: he cracks hard seed pods for anyone who asks.
  • A Parasaurolophus whose call comes out higher than the rest is asked to hum quietly. True: its long, hollow crest may have made its calls resonate. Ends: in fog, hers is the call a lost calf can find.
  • A Protoceratops digs herself a hollow in the sand before every storm, and one day digs up a neighbor. True: its wide feet had flat, shovel-like claws, useful in sand. Ends: they share the hollow till the wind drops.
  • A Psittacosaurus is the best hider in the forest and is tired of never being found. True: one fossil keeps its shading, a camouflage that suits dim forest. Ends: she hides worse, on purpose.
  • A Spinosaurus wants to surprise his friends and can never sneak up on anyone. True: long spines on its back likely held up a sail of skin. Ends: he hangs weeds on the sail and comes as a bush.
  • A Therizinosaurus with the longest claws anyone has seen only wants to come to the leaf-eaters' picnic. True: its claws, the longest of any land animal, suited pulling down plants. Ends: she reaches the high branch for all.
  • A Triceratops who likes his own company keeps being asked to join a herd. True: there is little evidence that Triceratops lived in herds. Ends: he walks beside one for a day and goes home happy.
  • A Velociraptor is tired of being taken for a bird by everything bigger than she is. True: Velociraptor was feathered and about the size of a turkey. Ends: a real bird asks her the way, and she tells it.
  • A Velociraptor who is wide awake at night has a friend who is only awake by day. True: Velociraptor may have been active at night. Ends: they meet at dusk and at dawn, briefly, every day.
  • A young plant-eater finds the first flower her herd has ever seen and does not know whether to eat it. True: flowering plants first appeared in the Early Cretaceous. Ends: she eats it. Next year there are more.
  • A young Tyrannosaurus follows the best smell she has ever smelled for three days. True: Tyrannosaurus could smell extremely well. Ends: it is the sea, and she is not sure what to do with it.
  • An Ankylosaurus keeps knocking things over behind her and is always the last to find out. True: it had a large club at the end of its tail. Ends: the neighbors ask her to clear paths, walking backward.
  • An Argentinosaurus has never seen the end of her own tail and sets out to. True: Argentinosaurus, about 100 feet long, was one of the largest land animals. Ends: a friend back there waves it.
  • An Iguanodon is certain that the spike on his thumb belongs on his nose. True: the first people to rebuild Iguanodon put the thumb spike on its nose. Ends: he holds it there and cannot eat.
  • Everyone calls an Oviraptor an egg thief, and she is only sitting on her own eggs. True: the name means egg thief, but the fossil was brooding a nest. Ends: the eggs hatch, with apologies all round.

Set today, at a dig 20

  • A boy is given one square of ground to brush all summer and uncovers a single tooth. Find: one tooth. Ends: it is the only tooth the dig finds that year, and his name goes on the label.
  • A boy on a beach walk finds a footprint as long as his arm in a slab the tide has just turned over. Find: one fossil footprint, and the tide is coming back. Ends: his drawing of it is what the museum keeps.
  • A boy proudly brings his best rock to the museum and is told, kindly, what it is. Find: fossil dung, which is called a coprolite. Ends: he is prouder than before, and it gets its own case.
  • A boy too young for the dig team is put in charge of the labels and catches a mix-up. Find: two bones in the wrong boxes. Ends: the skeleton gets its own foot back.
  • A child names the skeleton before the scientists can, and the name sticks. Find: a long-neck, now called Biscuit. Ends: the sign carries both names, and nobody reads the long one.
  • A class trip to a quarry finds nothing all day, until the smallest pupil sits down on a tailbone. Find: a row of tail bones, still in order. Ends: the class comes back every Friday until it has the hips.
  • A fossil turns up under the school's playing field on the day before the big game. Find: a backbone at the halfway line. Ends: the game moves to the parking lot, and both teams come to dig.
  • A girl digging a hole for a fence post hits something that is not a rock and not a root. Find: one end of a very long bone. Ends: the fence takes a detour, and the museum sends a truck.
  • A girl finds a fossil footprint under her grandmother's porch step, where the stone was laid face down. Find: a print walked over for fifty years. Ends: the step is turned, and visitors step around it.
  • A girl finds an egg-shaped stone and keeps it by her bed in case it hatches. Find: a fossil egg. Ends: it does not hatch, and the museum's scanner shows her what is curled inside.
  • A girl mails a drawing of a strange rock to a museum, and four scientists are at her door on Saturday. Find: a piece of jaw. Ends: she leads them up the hill and is the first to see the rest of it.
  • A girl whose family runs a rock shop learns that the paperweight on the counter is a toe bone. Find: it was there all along, with a price tag. Ends: the tag comes off, and a label goes on.
  • A girl's dog digs up a bone in the dry wash behind the house and will not give it back. Find: a toe bone turned to stone. Ends: she trades him a ham bone, and the dog thinks he won.
  • A grandfather shows the funny rock he found as a boy, which has propped up the short leg of his table ever since. Find: the missing end of a museum's leg bone. Ends: the two ends meet, and the table gets a folded newspaper.
  • A hiker's little brother picks up a rock with a pattern like skin, and the ranger asks to see where. Find: the print of a dinosaur's skin. Ends: he puts it back exactly, and the ranger lets him plant the flag.
  • A museum unpacks a skeleton from forty crates, and a child visiting sees that one piece is upside down. Find: a mistake. Ends: the curator turns the bone over, and the animal stands straighter.
  • A road crew cutting through a hill stops its diggers for a boy at the fence who keeps pointing. Find: ribs in the cut bank, like the frame of a boat. Ends: the road waits a month, and the boy gets a hard hat.
  • A school borrows a cast of a skull, and a girl who is afraid of it is asked to measure the teeth. Find: each tooth is longer than her hand. Ends: by the tenth she is not afraid, and by the last she has named it.
  • Twins at a dig argue over whether their bone is a leg or a rib, and it is a neck, longer than their tent. Find: one neck bone of a long-neck. Ends: they stop arguing to carry it, one at each end.
  • Two friends find a line of footprints in a dry riverbed and walk in them, four steps to each stride. Find: a trackway, the prints of one animal walking. Ends: it stops at a ledge, and they spend the summer asking why.

Set today, in a town 20

  • A boy's new neighbor is a dinosaur too shy to return the balls that come over the fence. Trouble: nineteen balls are over there now. Ends: they all come back at once, with a note of apology.
  • A dinosaur egg sold as a garden ornament hatches during a heat wave. Trouble: the hatchling takes the garden gnome for its mother. Ends: the family moves the gnome wherever it should go.
  • A dinosaur new in town is afraid of the pigeons in the square. Trouble: pigeons are everywhere. Ends: told that birds are dinosaurs too, it starts to feed them.
  • A dinosaur signs up for the school fun run. Trouble: it finishes in four strides. Ends: it runs again at the back, at the speed of the slowest child.
  • A dinosaur takes the ferry every day and always stands at the same rail. Trouble: the ferry leans. Ends: the passengers learn to stand at the other rail, and it becomes the custom.
  • A farmer finds his pumpkin patch eaten down to the stems and a horned dinosaur asleep in the barn. Trouble: the fair is on Saturday. Ends: he enters the dinosaur instead and wins Largest.
  • A girl carries a hatchling in her backpack through a whole school day. Trouble: it answers a question in math, with a squeak. Ends: the teacher marks it present.
  • A long-neck is hired to change the bulbs in the stadium lights. Trouble: it eats the flags. Ends: the team prints new flags every week and calls it a tradition.
  • A long-neck stands in for the broken crane at a building site. Trouble: it will only lift before lunch. Ends: the building goes up a floor at a time, mornings only.
  • A long-neck walks down the main street at rush hour and waits its turn, politely, at every corner. Trouble: it blocks four lanes. Ends: the town paints it a lane of its own, and traffic has never moved better.
  • A museum guard finds a living dinosaur looking up at the skeleton of one of its own kind. Trouble: the tail is mounted wrong, and it is upset. Ends: the museum fixes the tail, and it visits on Sundays.
  • A plant-eating dinosaur answers an ad for a lawn-mowing job. Trouble: it also mows the flower beds. Ends: it is moved to the golf course, where everyone is happy.
  • A plated dinosaur is found asleep on the soccer field on the morning of the final. Trouble: it will not wake. Ends: the game is played around it, and it is credited with one save.
  • A small feathered dinosaur moves in at the duck pond, and the ducks treat it as a rude cousin. Trouble: it cannot swim. Ends: it minds the ducklings on the bank while the ducks are out.
  • A small meat-eater keeps taking the sausages from one family's grill. Trouble: it is quicker than the tongs. Ends: they set it a place, and it learns to wait for cooked.
  • A town wakes to find a herd passing through on its way somewhere else. Trouble: the herd is using Main Street. Ends: the town closes the road for the day and keeps it as a holiday.
  • A very small dinosaur is taken for a pigeon by everyone at the bus stop except one girl. Trouble: nobody looks closely at pigeons. Ends: she shares her sandwich, and it has teeth.
  • Fresh three-toed prints cross the wet cement of the new sidewalk every morning. Trouble: the crew keeps smoothing them out. Ends: they leave one set and write the date beside it.
  • On a foggy night a long-neck gets its head above the fog and guides lost drivers by calling. Trouble: it only knows the way to the lake. Ends: the whole town has a pleasant evening at the lake.
  • The school bus gets one more stop on its route: the swamp. Trouble: the new rider does not fit through the door. Ends: it walks beside the bus and is never late.

How it works

In these 100 dinosaur story ideas a dinosaur is the lead or the find. They are sorted by when the story is set: the Triassic, the Jurassic, the Cretaceous, or today, at a dig or in a town.

Read the full guide

Three ages of dinosaurs

In the Triassic the first dinosaurs appear and are not yet in charge: an Eoraptor, a Coelophysis. The Jurassic has the giant long-necks, Diplodocus and Brachiosaurus, and Stegosaurus. In the Cretaceous the first flowers open, and Tyrannosaurus and Triceratops arrive near the end.

At a dig and in a town

Forty ideas are set today. At a dig, a child finds something: a tooth, a footprint under a porch step, a toe bone sold as a paperweight. In a town, a made-up dinosaur turns up and has to fit in: on the school bus route, at the fun run, at the duck pond.

  • Build the trouble on one true thing: a neck that arrives first, a tail that knocks things over.
  • In a Jurassic story the forest is ferns and conifers. Flowers come in the Cretaceous.

Questions and answers

What are some good dinosaur story ideas?

Start from something real. On this list a Tyrannosaurus follows a smell for three days, an Oviraptor called an egg thief is only sitting on her own eggs, and a girl's paperweight turns out to be a toe bone.

Did all dinosaurs live at the same time?

No. Stegosaurus lived in the Late Jurassic and Tyrannosaurus at the very end of the Cretaceous, more than 75 million years later. Tyrannosaurus lived nearer in time to us than to Stegosaurus, so the two never met.

How do you write a dinosaur story for kids?

Choose one dinosaur and one problem its body gives it: a tail it cannot see the end of, a call that comes out too high. Let it solve the problem its own way. The line under each idea gives an ending.

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