Dinosaurs for Hangman ๐ฆ
A curated set of example dinosaur words for your own hangman games, sorted by difficulty and each with a checked clue - ideal for teachers setting up a classroom game or quiz hosts picking a themed round. The lists below move from simple words about dinosaur bodies to the full scientific names palaeontologists actually use. To play hangman online with a different set of words, try the Dinosaurs category on Hangmango.
Play Dinosaurs Hangman ๐ฅญEasy dinosaur words for hangman
Short words (4-7 letters): dinosaur body parts like frills and crests, the tracks they left behind, a few short, easy-to-say dinosaur names, plus the birds that are their living relatives and the supercontinent they lived on.
Medium dinosaur words for hangman
Real dinosaur names and the group names scientists use, like sauropod and theropod - the kind you'd hear on a museum audio guide.
Hard dinosaur words for hangman - the trickiest spellings
Full scientific names (13-19 letters) built mostly from tricky Greek word-parts. These will test the grown-ups too.
Clues for every word
A one-line clue for every word, easy to hard, each one checked against a source - read them out when you run your own game. These words and clues are separate from the ones in the online game, so they won't give its answers away.
- Bird
- Feathered, beaked animals alive today that scientists count as the only living dinosaurs.
- Frill
- Bony collar over the neck of big horned dinosaurs, perhaps used for display.
- Crest
- Some duck-billed dinosaurs had a big one on their heads, probably for display or making noises.
- Plates
- The "roof lizard" was named for these, once wrongly thought to lie flat on its back like tiles.
- Armour
- Ankylosaurs had this bony protection over much of their bodies, from head to tail.
- Tracks
- Fossil trails of footprints; dinosaur ones show exactly how the animals stood and walked.
- Pangaea
- Giant supercontinent of long ago; by the time it broke up, dinosaurs flourished in its forests.
- Troodon
- Small, bird-like dinosaur whose name is Ancient Greek for "wounding tooth".
- Minmi
- Small plant-eating ankylosaur from Australia that once had the shortest name of any dinosaur of its era.
- Dilong
- Small early tyrannosaur relative from China that gave the first evidence of feathers in tyrannosaurs.
- Baryonyx
- Dinosaur with a very large claw on its first finger, found by an amateur collector in Surrey in 1983.
- Utahraptor
- One of the largest known dromaeosaurs, with a big curved claw on the second toe of each foot.
- Maiasaura
- Duck-billed dinosaur named "good mother lizard" because scientists concluded it cared for its young.
- Megalosaurus
- Big meat-eater from southern England; in 1824 it became the first non-bird dinosaur genus to be validly named.
- Protoceratops
- Small frilled dinosaur from Asia whose name means "first horned face".
- Coelophysis
- Small, slim meat-eater, one of the earliest known dinosaurs.
- Sauropod
- Plant-eaters with very long necks and tails, small heads and four thick, pillar-like legs.
- Theropod
- Dinosaur group with hollow bones and three toes; birds evolved from it and are its living members.
- Hadrosaur
- Duck-billed plant-eater whose teeth were stacked together into grinding surfaces.
- Apatosaurus
- Huge plant-eating sauropod from North America whose name means "deceptive lizard".
- Carcharodontosaurus
- Large meat-eater from North Africa whose name means "shark-toothed lizard".
- Psittacosaurus
- The "parrot lizard" from Asia, with a strong beak and more species than any other non-bird dinosaur.
- Euoplocephalus
- Large ankylosaur from Canada, largely covered in bony plates, with a beak for biting off plants.
- Heterodontosaurus
- Small dinosaur from South Africa with three types of teeth, including long tusks.
- Mamenchisaurus
- Chinese sauropod with a remarkably long neck that made up nearly half its body length.
- Sinosauropteryx
- Small, long-tailed meat-eater, the first non-bird dinosaur found with signs of feathers.
- Cryolophosaurus
- Large hunter with a strange crest across its head, the first meat-eating dinosaur found in Antarctica.
- Hypsilophodon
- Small, nimble plant-eater from the Isle of Wight, with a sharp beak much like a parrot's.
- Corythosaurus
- Duck-billed dinosaur whose name means "helmeted lizard"; its tall crest was probably for making sounds.
- Styracosaurus
- Plant-eater with four to six long spikes on its neck frill and a single horn on its nose.
What makes dinosaur names hard to guess in hangman?
Greek and Latin word-parts. Most dinosaur names are built from Greek or Latin roots - Troodon means "wounding tooth," Protoceratops means "first horned face." These roots don't follow everyday English spelling patterns, so early guesses often reveal little.
The -saurus ending turns up a lot. Nine of the 30 words here end in -saurus, from the Greek word sauros, and more have "saur" elsewhere, like sauropod, hadrosaur and Sinosauropteryx. Once you've spotted it, the back half of a word gets predictable - but the front half can still be a genuine mystery.
Length for its own sake. The hard words run from 13 to 19 letters - Carcharodontosaurus has 19 and Heterodontosaurus 17 - built from several stacked word-parts rather than being hard ideas.
Not every prehistoric reptile is a dinosaur. Flying pterosaurs like Pterodactylus and sea reptiles like plesiosaurs, ichthyosaurs and mosasaurs lived at the same time, but they aren't dinosaurs, so they aren't in this list. Birds, on the other hand, are living dinosaurs, which is why bird is in the easy list.
Tips for guessing dinosaur words
Open with R, A, O and S. R turns up in 23 of these 30 words, A and O in 21 each, and every hard word has an S.
Break the word into chunks. Dinosaur names are built from several word-parts stuck together - try to recognise one chunk at a time rather than the word as a whole.
Try U after S, A and R. Thirteen of the 30 words contain "saur", so if you see S and A, then a gap, then R, a U in that gap is a good bet.
On hard words, pace yourself. With 13 to 19 letters to fill, use your wrong guesses to rule out letters systematically rather than guessing at random.
Watch for word-parts you have already seen. "Odon" (tooth) turns up in Troodon, Hypsilophodon, Carcharodontosaurus and Heterodontosaurus, and "-pod" (foot) ends both sauropod and theropod.
Questions
What is the hardest dinosaur name to guess in hangman?
Carcharodontosaurus is the longest word on this page - 19 letters built from several stacked Greek word-parts. Heterodontosaurus, at 17 letters, is close behind.
Are the hard words real scientific names?
Yes - genuine dinosaur genus names used by palaeontologists, not simplified or shortened.
Can I use these words in my own hangman game?
Absolutely - these example words and clues are here for your own games, and they're separate from the words in the online game. If you'd prefer to play online with dinosaurs as the category right now, click here to start a game.
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