How to read a dinosaur model

Next time you visit a dinosaur park or museum, check these six things. You will be able to tell which models match the latest science, which ones show an older picture, and which ones are not dinosaurs at all.

A model is an interpretation, not a photo

Nobody has ever seen a living dinosaur. Every model is built from the bones that were found, plus educated guesses about the parts that did not fossilize, such as muscle, skin and colour. As our knowledge changes, the way dinosaurs look in models changes too.

The most famous example is the dinosaurs at Crystal Palace in London, unveiled in 1854. Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins built them under the direction of Richard Owen. Their Iguanodon has a horn on its nose, which was really a thumb bone, and their Megalosaurus walks on four legs, although we now know it walked on two. The models still stand today and have become a lesson that science can always change.^[1][2]

So a "wrong" model is not always a bad one. Many were made with the best knowledge of their time. The fun part is checking how well each one matches what we know now, using the simple checks below.

Check 1: Is the tail up or on the ground?

In the 19th and early 20th centuries, scientists often showed meat-eaters like T. rex standing upright like a kangaroo, with the tail resting on the ground as a prop. From around the 1970s, biomechanical studies showed that two-legged dinosaurs held the body level with the ground and kept the tail in the air to balance the head.^[3]

If a model stands straight up with its tail lying on the ground, it shows the old picture. Dinosaur footprints agree with the new one, because tail-drag marks are almost never found. You can read more in this site's article on dinosaur footprints.

Check 2: Palms down, or palms facing each other?

Theropods, the group of meat-eating dinosaurs, could not turn their palms down. The two bones of the forearm were locked together, so they could not twist the arm the way humans can.^[3]

The right pose has the palms facing each other, as if about to clap. If you see a raptor or a T. rex with its hands hanging palms-down like a begging dog or a bunny, that is a place where the model does not match the evidence.^[3]

Check 3: Feathers or scales?

We now know that many theropods had feathers. In 2007, scientists found quill knobs on the forearm bone of Velociraptor, the same feather anchor points seen in birds. A correct raptor should have feathers on its arms, like wings.^[4]

Big dinosaurs could have feathers too. Yutyrannus, a relative of T. rex from China about 9 metres long, has fossils with clear long filament feathers, reported in 2012.^[5]

But not every dinosaur was fully feathered. Patches of T. rex skin from the neck, hips and tail show small scales, according to a 2017 report. An adult T. rex that is mostly scaly is therefore a picture with evidence behind it.^[6]

Check 4: The mouth and teeth

Teeth tell you what a dinosaur ate. Meat-eating theropods had flat, blade-like teeth that curve backwards and have saw-like edges. Plant-eaters had different teeth, such as peg-shaped or spoon-shaped ones.

Ornithischian dinosaurs, such as Triceratops, Stegosaurus and Iguanodon, had a toothless beak at the front of the mouth. If a model from this group has teeth all the way to the tip of its mouth, the builder missed this point.^[7]

Check 5: When did it live, and how big was it?

Dinosaur parks often put dinosaurs from different times side by side, but many of them never met. Stegosaurus lived in the Late Jurassic, about 155–145 million years ago, while T. rex lived about 68–66 million years ago, more than 80 million years later.^[8]

Write down the names of the dinosaurs you see, then look them up on this site's timeline and size comparison pages. You will find out which ones really lived at the same time, and whether the models are life-size.

Check 6: Is it really a dinosaur?

Many dinosaur parks mix in prehistoric animals that are not dinosaurs: flying pterosaurs, which are a different group of reptiles; sea reptiles like plesiosaurs and mosasaurs; Dimetrodon, with the sail on its back, which is actually closer to mammals than to dinosaurs; and mammoths, which are mammals.^[9][10]

These animals are just as interesting as dinosaurs, but if the sign calls them dinosaurs, that is a mistake. Read more in the article "Animals people think are dinosaurs, but aren't" and in this site's section on other prehistoric animals.