1. Therizinosaurus
The therizinosaurs are scary-looking late Cretaceous theropods from Asia and North America. They were probably not carnivorous, despite their nightmarish Freddy Krueger claws.
These unusual dinosaurs had a small skull and leaf-shaped teeth but lacked teeth in the front half of the upper jaw.
2. Compsognathus
The diminutive members of the genus Compsognathus are great for the remarkable sense of scale they provide.
They were about the size of a turkey—exponentially smaller than their theropod relatives the tyrannosaurs—but they possessed the same elegantly raptorial proportions, darting about on their lithe back legs and snapping up smaller creatures.
3. Ankylosaurus
Ankylosaurus is a creature so overdesigned that it seems too good to be true. With spikes on its head and side, a back covered with armored plates, and a tail that ended in a massive club of bone, it was more spectacularly protected from predators than Stegosaurus with its ostentatious plates.
4. Velociraptor
Contrary to what Jurassic Park would have you believe, although they reached up to 1.8 meters (6 feet) in length, velociraptors weren’t much larger than a turkey, standing just under 0.6 meter (2 feet) in height.
5. Dreadnoughtus
Dreadnoughtus schrani was discovered in Argentina and is thought to be the largest terrestrial animal to have ever walked the planet. This massive sauropod flourished during the Late Cretaceous Epoch (100.5 million to 66 million years ago).
6. Pachycephalosaurus
Pachycephalosaurus is great because it comes with a fabulous hat. This dino sported a bony dome on top of its head, sometimes with fancy knobs or spikes. It was thought for a time that the domes were for head butting, like the horns of modern-day rams.
