Not all dinosaurs were giants! Some were as small as a pigeon, and one is so tiny it weighs less than a penny. Meet the tiniest dinosaurs ever found.
Quick Answer
The smallest dinosaur is the bee hummingbird, a bird from Cuba that is about 2¼ inches long and weighs less than a penny. (Yes, birds are dinosaurs!) The smallest dinosaurs from long ago were Anchiornis, Parvicursor and Epidexipteryx, each about the size of a pigeon.
Scientists agree that birds are dinosaurs. They are the one group of dinosaurs that survived when the others went extinct. So the answer depends on which dinosaurs you mean:
Counting birds: the bee hummingbird
About as long as your little finger and as light as a paper clip. No dinosaur from the past is known to be smaller.
Dinosaurs from long ago: a pigeon-sized tie
Anchiornis, Parvicursor and Epidexipteryx were all around 15 inches long and about 6 ounces. Most are known from only a few fossils, so the winner could change with the next discovery!
Say it: BEE HUM-ing-bird
🐣 About as big as: A bumblebee
📏 Length: About 2¼ inches (5 to 6 cm)
⚖️ Weight: About 2 grams, less than a US penny
🗺️ Alive today in Cuba
⭐ Birds are dinosaurs, so this tiny bird is the smallest dinosaur that has ever been found, alive or extinct. Its eggs are about the size of a coffee bean, and its heart beats more than 1,000 times a minute when it flies!
Why birds are dinosaurs →
Say it: AN-kee-OR-nis
🐣 About as big as: A pigeon
📏 Length: About 13 to 16 inches (34 to 40 cm)
⚖️ Weight: About ¼ to ½ pound (110 to 250 g)
🗺️ 160 million years ago, China
⭐ One of the tiniest dinosaurs from long ago. Scientists looked at tiny color cells in its fossil feathers and found it was black and white with a red crest on its head, like a little woodpecker. It even had feathers on its legs.
Say it: PAR-vee-KUR-sor
🐣 About as big as: A pigeon with long legs
📏 Length: About 15 inches (39 cm)
⚖️ Weight: About 6 ounces (160 g)
🗺️ 70 million years ago, Mongolia
⭐ Its name means “small runner.” It had long, skinny legs for zooming across the desert, and tiny arms with one big thumb claw that may have been used to dig into ant and termite nests.
Say it: EP-ih-dex-IP-ter-ix
🐣 About as big as: A pigeon wearing streamers
📏 Length: About 10 inches, plus long tail feathers (44 cm in all)
⚖️ Weight: About 6 ounces (160 g)
🗺️ 160 million years ago, China
⭐ Its name means “display feather.” It couldn't fly, but it had four long ribbon feathers on its tail, probably for showing off, like a peacock does today.
Say it: ee CHEE
🐣 About as big as: A pigeon with bat wings
📏 Length: About the size of a pigeon
⚖️ Weight: About 13 ounces (380 g)
🗺️ 160 million years ago, China
⭐ Its name means “strange wing” in Chinese, and it has the shortest dinosaur name of all! Instead of feathered wings, it had stretchy skin wings like a bat, which it probably used to glide between trees.
Say it: mah-hah-KAH-lah
🐣 About as big as: A chicken
📏 Length: About 28 inches (70 cm), mostly tail
⚖️ Weight: About 1 pound (around 500 g)
🗺️ 75 million years ago, Mongolia
⭐ A tiny cousin of Velociraptor! It had the same kind of curved claw on each foot, but it was about the size of a chicken. It was probably a fast little hunter of bugs and lizards.
Say it: FROO-tah-denz
🐣 About as big as: A cat
📏 Length: About 2 to 2½ feet (65 to 75 cm)
⚖️ Weight: About 1 to 1½ pounds (0.5 to 0.75 kg)
🗺️ 150 million years ago, Colorado, USA
⭐ Named after the town of Fruita, Colorado, where it was found. It is one of the smallest plant-eating dinosaurs ever, and it lived at the same time as giant Stegosaurus and Brachiosaurus!
Say it: MY-kro-RAP-tor
🐣 About as big as: A crow
📏 Length: About 2½ feet (77 cm), including its tail
⚖️ Weight: About 2 pounds (1 kg)
🗺️ 120 million years ago, China
⭐ It had four wings, with feathers on its arms AND legs. Guinness World Records once listed it as the smallest dinosaur.
More flying dinosaurs →
Say it: komp-SOG-nah-thus
🐣 About as big as: A turkey
📏 Length: About 3 feet (1 m), mostly tail
⚖️ Weight: About 2 to 7 pounds (1 to 3 kg)
🗺️ 150 million years ago, Germany and France
⭐ For more than 100 years, “Compy” was called the smallest dinosaur. One fossil even has its last meal inside its tummy: a little lizard! Newer finds are smaller, so it lost the title.
Here are the tiny dinosaurs lined up nose to tail, next to a house cat and a 4-year-old. Lots of them were shorter than a preschooler is tall!
Bee hummingbird
Anchiornis
Parvicursor
Epidexipteryx (with tail feathers)
House cat (body)
Mahakala
Fruitadens
Microraptor
Compsognathus
A 4-year-old child (height)
Lengths are nose to tail tip and are scientists' best estimates. Try it at home: grab a ruler or tape measure and find something that is 15 inches long. That's an Anchiornis!
In 2020, scientists described a teeny skull, smaller than your thumbnail, trapped in 99-million-year-old amber (fossil tree sap). They named it Oculudentavis, “eye-tooth bird,” and news around the world called it the smallest dinosaur ever.
But other scientists noticed its skull looked a lot like a lizard's. The paper was taken back, and in 2021 a second, more complete fossil showed it really was a lizard. That's how science works: scientists check each other's ideas and change their minds when new clues turn up.
Even the big dinosaur families had little members. Here are some of the tiniest of their kind:
Long necks
Europasaurus
About 20 feet (6 m) long
Tiny for a long-neck! It lived on an island, where there wasn't much food, so it shrank over time.
Horned dinosaurs
Aquilops
About 2 feet (60 cm) long
A rabbit-sized early cousin of Triceratops, with a hooked beak like an eagle.
Dome-heads
Wannanosaurus
About 2 feet (60 cm) long
A little head-butter with a flat, thick skull, smaller than a Labrador.
Armored dinosaurs
Minmi
About 7 to 10 feet (2 to 3 m) long
A small armored dinosaur from Australia, covered in bony plates, even on its belly.
And remember, every dinosaur started out small. Even the biggest long-necks hatched from eggs no bigger than a soccer ball. Find out more about dinosaur eggs and babies.
👪 For parents and teachers
“Smallest dinosaur” is a great way into two big ideas. First, birds are living dinosaurs, so a hummingbird at your feeder counts. Second, science changes with new evidence, as the Oculudentavis story shows. For a hands-on activity, have kids cut paper strips to each dinosaur's length and line them up from smallest to biggest.
Birds are dinosaurs, so the smallest dinosaur ever found is the bee hummingbird from Cuba. It is about 2¼ inches long and weighs about 2 grams, less than a penny. Among dinosaurs that lived long ago, some of the smallest were pigeon-sized Anchiornis, Parvicursor and Epidexipteryx.
There is no single winner, because many tiny dinosaurs are known from only a few bones. The best candidates are Anchiornis, Parvicursor and Epidexipteryx, which were about 13 to 17 inches long and weighed around 6 ounces, about as much as a pigeon.
For more than 100 years, Compsognathus was called the smallest dinosaur. It was about 3 feet long, mostly tail, and about the size of a turkey. Since then scientists have found even smaller dinosaurs, like Anchiornis and Parvicursor.
No. In 2020, a tiny skull trapped in amber was named Oculudentavis and called the smallest dinosaur. Later, scientists found a second, more complete fossil and discovered it was actually a lizard, so it is not a dinosaur at all.
Fruitadens, from Colorado, is one of the smallest plant-eating dinosaurs. It was about 2 to 2½ feet long and weighed about as much as a big guinea pig, and it lived alongside giants like Stegosaurus.
They measure fossil bones and compare them with full skeletons of related animals. They also look inside bones for growth rings, like tree rings, to tell whether the animal was a baby or a grown-up, because a tiny fossil might just be a young dinosaur.
Image credits (via Wikimedia Commons): Bee hummingbird photos by Charles J. Sharp (CC BY-SA 4.0); Anchiornis and Epidexipteryx by Nobu Tamura (CC BY 3.0); Fruitadens by Nobu Tamura (CC BY 3.0); Yi qi by Nobu Tamura (CC BY-SA 4.0); Parvicursor by PaleoEquii (CC BY-SA 4.0); Mahakala by Sauriazoicillus (CC BY-SA 4.0); Microraptor by Matt Martyniuk (CC BY 3.0); Compsognathus by TotalDino (CC BY 4.0); Oculudentavis by SpinoDragon145 (CC BY-SA 4.0).
Big dinosaur fans come in small sizes too! 🦖
Sing along with our dinosaur nursery rhymes and kids' songs, or print a free dinosaur coloring page.
