Free Dinosaur Coloring Pages

Dinosaurs ruled the Earth for over 160 million years, long before there were any people to see them. Everything we know about them comes from fossils — bones, footprints, eggs and even droppings turned to stone — which is why nobody can tell a child their dinosaur is the wrong colour. Each of the eight sheets here shows a different real species, named on the page description so children pick up the names as they colour. Colour is the best part of a dinosaur page. Scientists have only worked out the true colours of a handful of species, so greens, browns, greys, blues and bold stripes are all fair game. A good prompt for older children is to ask why they chose their colours: camouflage in a forest, warning colours like a poison frog, or bright patterns for showing off, which is one real theory for why Spinosaurus had a sail on its back. The eight designs get steadily harder. The Parasaurolophus standing on its back legs and the long-necked Brachiosaurus come first — thick outlines, wide open shapes and almost no interior detail, which suits toddlers and preschoolers still learning to stay inside the lines. The gliding Pterodactyl, the smiling T. rex on its grassy patch and the Triceratops with its dotted neck frill sit in the middle, adding some pattern without becoming fussy. The last three are for children who want a long project: an Ankylosaurus covered in armour plates, a Stegosaurus with big back plates and patterned skin, and a Spinosaurus whose tall sail and wrinkled body are drawn in fine, closely spaced lines. Every sheet prints on landscape US Letter paper at 200 DPI, so the dinosaur fills the page without being cut off. Plain copier paper is fine for crayons and colored pencils. Use slightly thicker card stock for markers or paint, especially on the last three designs, where thin lines can smudge together on flimsy paper. In the classroom these pages pair naturally with a unit on fossils, on what herbivores and carnivores eat, or on the letter D. Look at the mouths together: the T. rex and Spinosaurus have pointed teeth for meat, while the Brachiosaurus, Triceratops, Stegosaurus and Ankylosaurus have blunt beaks and flat teeth for plants. Printing several designs and letting each child choose their own turns a quiet activity into a sorting exercise, and the finished sheets pin up neatly as a wall-sized prehistoric scene. The Pterodactyl is worth a quick note, since it comes up every time. Pterosaurs were flying reptiles that lived alongside the dinosaurs but were not dinosaurs themselves — a small distinction children usually love knowing, and one that makes them the expert at the table.