There aren’t many LEGO dinosaur figures, which means it will be a short article (… 10 pages later…). Seriously though, there are currently 99 dinosaurs listed on Bricklink. Add the DUPLO ones, and before you know it, we’ll be done! (Note to self: 100 dinosaurs mean there ARE many dinosaur figures. Get a hold of yourself, woman!)
I thought about why there are less dinosaur figures when compared to other animals (great, there she goes again!). They are usually very big figures. Most of them need to have their unique moulds, which means a new mould for every species made. The sets they can be released with are limited, too. I mean, of course you can squeeze in a dinosaur in a city set, if that’s how the story goes, but they would look weird next to knights, in a city on top of the clouds, or fighting against ninjas.
As for different species… they are very rich in that aspect! If you’re ready, let’s begin our journey from the first LEGO dinosaur to current day.
Like the others in the series, this article will be updated as new animals are released. The name of the colors used here are the Bricklink colors. To see a better image of the color, please visit this link, search for the color, and click on its name to go to Rylie Howerter’s Flickr page.
PS: I have only a few of these figures, so I borrowed most of the images from other sources. I had to crop off their watermarks when editing. I apologize in advance to the original owners. You can find the sources I used at the end of the article.
PS 2: I’d like to thank Brian Fischer and True North Bricks for all their help with the images.
Adventurers: Dino Island and Studios
Everything begins with a group of adventurer minifigures travelling to an island full of dinosaurs (yeah, I have no idea about the story, just repeating the theme name here). These same minifigures carry their adventures to the big screen afterwards. There are six LEGO dinosaur figures released under Dino Island and Studios themes: Tyrannosaurus rex (T-Rex for short), baby T-Rex, Triceratops, Stegosaurus, Pteranodon and Spinosaurus. All of them except three come with one set each.
The baby T-Rex is the luckiest. It appears in a total of 13 sets until 2009 and is released in four different colors: Green, dark bluish gray, red and metallic gold. It can be found in themes including Indiana Jones, Agents, and even Batman. T-Rex appears in two Dino Island and one Studios set, in green.
Pteranodon can be found in red, tan and dark orange in a total of five sets, all from the Dino Island theme.
There are two versions of the Triceratops. The color of the body is the same in both, dark gray, but one has light gray legs, the other dark orange. Stegosaurus has two different leg colors, too, light gray and dark orange. It has a brown body.
A Spinosaurus appears in Studios sets in 2001. It consists of 20 parts, big and small, and is mostly dark gray. The most fun thing about it is that it uses the head piece of the alligator as its tongue :)
Dinosaurs
There’s a theme released in 2001 called Dinosaurs. It’s a strange theme, and for some reason, none of the dinos are listed as animals. There’s a total of 8 sets, four adult and four baby dinos. They mostly use sand green and sand blue pieces. It’s possible to create different species using the parts included in the set, like the Creator 3-in-1 sets of today. They shouldn’t be included here since they’re brick-built, but it’s not a very well-known theme and most of the parts they use are unique to them, so I made an exception.
Dino Attack and Dino 2010
Both these themes were released in 2005; Dino Attack in North America, Asia and Oceania, Dino 2010 in Europe. When you compare the sets, while their names and set numbers are different, they look almost the same. Look closely and you see the part count changes from one to another. Their main difference is Dino Attack, as the name says, is based more on attack, while Dino 2010 is about neutralizing and capturing. Here is an example of two similar sets, moving on with the LEGO dinosaur figures.
The dinosaurs in this theme are mutated. There are 7 dinosaurs in 4 different moulds, all appearing in two sets each. One is called a mutant lizard, released in dark orange, light purple and black. The black one has two different back prints.
We have a mutant Pteranodon, all black except the underside, which is dark green.
Raptor / Velociraptor has a black body with yellow underside.
Mutant T-Rex as lit-up eyes. Seriously. There’s a switch on its head, making it possible for the eyes to light up. There are two variations, one with a red underside, the other with dark green.
Did you notice, the undersides of these are not single colors, they look marbled.
These mutant LEGO dinosaur figures are a little big, as you can see below.
Toy Story
We don’t see another dinosaur until 2010. With the Toy Story sets, Rex enters our lives in bright green. He’s re-released again in 2019, this time with a different print. The first one is in two, the second one is in one set.
Dino and Jurassic World
The Dino theme released in 2012 is the last unlicensed LEGO dinosaur theme. The moulds take their final shapes with it. Most of the dinosaur moulds still used today originate from here. Jurassic World takes over in 2015, and the dinosaurs released afterwards mostly belong to that theme. After this point, I will continue to write according to the species. The year next to the name shows when the animal was first released.
Coelophysis / Gallimimus (2012)
Pteranodon (2012)
Velociraptor (2012)
T-Rex (2012)
Triceratops (2012)
Dilophosaurus (first version 2015, second version 2023)
Indominus rex (2015)
Carnotaurus (2018)
Indoraptor (2018)
Stygimoloch (2018)
Baryonyx (2019)
Ankylosaurus (2020)
Gallimimus (2020)
Atrociraptor (2022)
Giganotosaurus and Therizinosaurus (2022)
Pyroraptor (2022)
Quetzalcoatlus (2022)
Brachiosaurus (2023)
Allosaurus (2024)
Stegosaurus (2024)
We also have a few baby dinosaurs. First released in 2018 in dark orange and sand green, they have been showing up in sets in various colors and prints.
A baby Triceratops joins in 2020, and two more colors follow afterwards.
The baby Ankylosaurus is from 2020 as well, and it has three different colors, too.
Beta, Blue’s offspring, comes out in 2022. The mould is re-released in 2024 with a different print.
Who’s who?
I visited so many blogs and pages as I was researching and came up with beautiful comparison images. It’s possible to find them in higher resolution in their original sources, but I’m sharing them here to give an idea. The first three are mine, the rest are borrowed.
LEGO DUPLO Dinosaur Figures
DUPLO dinosaurs have been in the wild since 1997. There are 5 species released in their unique moulds: Brachiosaurus, Triceratops, Pteranodon, T-Rex and Diplodocus. All the dinosaurs released up till 2018 are unlicensed, and all species have both an adult and a baby figure. With the Jurassic World sets, the moulds are renewed and appear only in licensed sets. I have purchased a few back when they were released; if you’re into dinosaurs, I’d definitely recommend getting some – they’re too cute!
You can see all the unlicensed dinosaurs below. The images are all from different sources, so they are not in proportion with each other; except for the couples on top and the two group images at the bottom.
Here are the licensed dinos and a few comparison images.
Before I forget, let me add some costumed minifigures, too. The first image shows the Dino Dudes made by Crazy Bricks, before we had official dinosaur costumed minifigures. The second image is the T-Rex and Triceratops costumed figures coming with the CMF series.
And that’s it!
That concludes our dinosaur article. See, it didn’t take long, right? (Meanwhile the readers are catching z’s :) ) Anyway, I tried to be as comprehensive as possible, hopefully I managed it.
See you in the next article!
Image sources
I found that eBay is a treasure trove, so I got a lot of images from there. Besides that, I rummaged Rebrickable, Brickowl, Hello Bricks, Steinpalast, Bricks & Minifigs Anaheim, Bricksfanz, Brick Fanatics, Eurobricks, Adventure Bricks, Collect Jurassic, Playing With Bricks, New Elementary, The Brothers Brick, Brickset and Bricklink like there’s no tomorrow. I borrowed a few screenshots from BrickTsar ve NEO25’s YouTube videos. A few of the published images belong to me.
Some girls play with Barbie dolls, while others create small worlds with LEGO minifigures and continue to do so when they grow up. You can probably guess which group I belong to :)
