Dinosaurs & Prehistoric Life · Unit 3
Meat Eaters and Plant Eaters
Teeth, claws, defences and what dinosaurs ate
Diet is the strongest single predictor of a dinosaur's anatomy: teeth, jaw shape, gut size, limb proportions and defences all follow from what it ate and what tried to eat it.
The unit covers teeth and jaws, meat eaters and plant eaters, hunting and herding behaviour, and the horns, plates and armour that evolved in response to predators.
This unit breaks down into 18 short steps and 108 questions, starting at difficulty 1 and building to 3. Below you can see exactly what it covers, how the path is structured, and worked examples with explanations.
- Steps
- 18
- Questions
- 108
- Difficulty
- 1-3
What this unit covers
- Horns, Plates and Armour
- Hunting and Herds
- Plant Eaters
- Meat Eaters
- Teeth and Jaws
Where this fits
Follows Famous Dinosaurs.
Where people slip
Plates and horns were not necessarily weapons. Display to rivals and mates explains many of these structures at least as well as defence, and the two are hard to separate in a fossil.
How the unit is structured
Meat Eaters and Plant Eaters runs as 18 short steps that unlock in order. 13 are practice rounds and 5 are challenge rounds that pull together everything before them. Questions start at difficulty 1 and climb to 3 as you progress.
Challenge rounds
Example questions
30 real questions from this unit, with the answer and the reason behind it, grouped by what they practise. There are 108 in the unit altogether.
Horns, Plates and Armour
- Choose all that applyLevel 1
1. Which were real dinosaur defences? Pick all that apply.
- Hornscorrect
- Bony armourcorrect
- Spiked or clubbed tailscorrect
- Fire breathing
Horns, armour plates and tail weapons all evolved for defence.
- Multiple choiceLevel 1
2. How did Ankylosaurus defend itself?
- With armour and a bony tail clubcorrect
- By flying away
- By spitting venom
- By digging deep burrows
It had thick body armour and a heavy bony club on its tail.
- True or falseLevel 1
3. Living in a herd can help protect plant eaters from predators.
Answer: True
True. Many eyes spot danger sooner, and young animals stay in the middle.
- Fill the blankLevel 2
4. Bony plates set into the skin of armoured dinosaurs are called ____.
- osteodermscorrect
- feathers
- scales of gold
- gastroliths
Osteoderms are bones that grow within the skin.
- Sort into groupsLevel 2
5. Sort each defence as body armour or behaviour.
Answer: Bony plates = Body armour; Tail club = Body armour; Living in a herd = Behaviour; Running away = Behaviour
Some defences are built into the body, others are things an animal does.
- Type the answerLevel 2
6. Which armoured dinosaur swung a heavy club made of bone at the end of its tail?
Answer: Ankylosaurus
Ankylosaurus is the club-tailed tank of the Cretaceous.
Hunting and Herds
- Build the sentenceLevel 1
7. Build a sentence about dinosaur diets.
Answer: Most dinosaurs were plant eaters
Most dinosaur species were plant eaters.
- True or falseLevel 1
8. Many predators today both hunt and scavenge, and dinosaurs probably did too.
Answer: True
True. Free food is rarely refused.
- Choose all that applyLevel 2
9. Which clues reveal ancient feeding behaviour? Pick all that apply.
- Bite marks on bonecorrect
- Preserved stomach contentscorrect
- Fossil droppingscorrect
- Fossil recipes
Bite marks, gut contents and coprolites all record meals.
- Fact or fibLevel 2
10. In any ecosystem there are usually far fewer predators than plant eaters.
Answer: True
True. It takes a lot of prey to support one predator.
- Multiple choiceLevel 2
11. What is a scavenger?
- An animal that eats what is already deadcorrect
- An animal that only hunts at night
- An animal that eats grass
- An animal that lives in water
A scavenger eats animals that are already dead.
- Put in orderLevel 2
12. Put the steps of studying a predator's meal in order.
Answer: Find bones with strange marks -> Measure and describe the marks -> Compare them with known teeth -> Work out what happened
Find the fossil, spot the marks, match them to teeth, then interpret the behaviour.
Meat Eaters
- Fill the blankLevel 1
13. Meat eaters often had sharp ____ on their fingers and toes.
- clawscorrect
- feathers
- plates
- hooves
Claws helped grab and hold prey.
- Picture questionLevel 1
14. 🦷 Which kind of dinosaur would have used teeth like these?
- A meat eatercorrect
- A plant eater
- A flying reptile
- A fish
Sharp, pointed teeth belong to a meat eater.
- True or falseLevel 1
15. Meat-eating dinosaurs usually had sharp pointed teeth.
Answer: True
True. Sharp teeth are good for cutting through flesh.
- Choose all that applyLevel 2
16. Which features helped theropods hunt? Pick all that apply.
- Serrated slicing teethcorrect
- Grasping clawscorrect
- Forward-facing eyes in some speciescorrect
- Grinding cheek teeth
Sharp serrated teeth, grasping claws and good vision all supported hunting.
- Fact or fibLevel 2
17. All dinosaurs were fierce meat eaters.
Answer: False
False. Most dinosaur species were actually plant eaters.
- Multiple choiceLevel 2
18. How did most meat-eating dinosaurs walk?
- On two back legscorrect
- On all four legs
- On their tails
- They only swam
Meat eaters walked on two back legs, leaving their arms free.
Plant Eaters
- Choose all that applyLevel 1
19. Which of these were plant-eating dinosaurs? Pick all that apply.
- Stegosauruscorrect
- Brachiosauruscorrect
- Iguanodoncorrect
- Tyrannosaurus
Stegosaurus, Brachiosaurus and Iguanodon all ate plants.
- True or falseLevel 1
20. Most kinds of dinosaur ate plants rather than meat.
Answer: True
True. Plant eaters far outnumbered predators, as they do today.
- Fact or fibLevel 2
21. Plant eaters usually needed to spend far more of the day eating than meat eaters.
Answer: True
True. Plants give less energy, so more must be eaten.
- Fill the blankLevel 2
22. Many plant-eating dinosaurs cropped food with a hard ____ at the front of the mouth.
- beakcorrect
- trunk
- claw
- horn
A beak worked like garden shears on tough plants.
- Multiple choiceLevel 2
23. Which of these was a plant eater?
- Triceratopscorrect
- Tyrannosaurus
- Velociraptor
- Allosaurus
Triceratops used its beak to snip tough plants.
- Type the answerLevel 2
24. What word means a plant-eating animal?
Answer: herbivore
A herbivore eats plants.
Teeth and Jaws
- Match the pairsLevel 1
25. Match each tooth type to the food it suits.
Answer: Sharp blade-like teeth = Slicing meat; Flat grinding teeth = Chewing plants; Peg-like teeth = Stripping leaves; A hard beak = Snipping tough stems
Teeth are tools shaped by diet.
- Multiple choiceLevel 1
26. Why do we find so many separate dinosaur teeth as fossils?
- They shed and replaced teeth all their livescorrect
- They pulled out their own teeth
- Teeth were made of stone already
- They only had teeth as babies
Because dinosaurs shed and replaced teeth constantly, one animal could leave thousands behind.
- True or falseLevel 1
27. Dinosaurs grew new teeth throughout their lives to replace worn ones.
Answer: True
True. Unlike us, dinosaurs kept replacing teeth again and again.
- Fact or fibLevel 2
28. A dinosaur with flat grinding teeth was probably a hunter.
Answer: False
False. Flat grinding teeth point to a plant diet.
- Fill the blankLevel 2
29. Meat-eating dinosaur teeth often had tiny saw-like ____ along the edge.
- bumpscorrect
- feathers
- holes
- hairs
Serrations helped slice through flesh like a steak knife.
- Sort into groupsLevel 3
30. Sort each feeding structure by the diet it indicates.
Answer: Serrated blade teeth = Meat diet; Conical gripping teeth = Meat diet; Dental battery = Plant diet; Toothless beak with gastroliths = Plant diet
Anatomy is the first evidence for diet.
Where these questions come from. Each unit starts as a plan of the concepts it should cover and the difficulty it should span. Questions are written against that plan with AI assistance, then checked by a validator that rejects anything without a single defensible answer, an explanation, or plausible wrong options. How we write questions sets out the whole process, and corrections are fixed in the bank and reach the site and the app the same day.
How you practise
This unit mixes 11 different question formats, so you are recalling and applying rather than recognising the same layout every time.
- Build the sentence
- Choose all that apply
- Fact or fib
- Fill the blank
- Match the pairs
- Multiple choice
- Picture question
- Put in order
- Sort into groups
- True or false
- Type the answer
Practise Meat Eaters and Plant Eaters
108 questions across 18 steps. Start with step one and crawl at your own pace.
Play this unitMore units in Dinosaurs & Prehistoric Life
- What Is a Dinosaur?What dinosaurs were, when they lived and how we name them
- Famous DinosaursTyrannosaurus, Triceratops, Stegosaurus and the other stars
- Fossils and Fossil HuntingWhat fossils are, how they form and how they are found
- The Age of DinosaursTriassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous, and how deep time works
- Eggs, Nests and Growing UpDinosaur eggs, nests, babies and family life
- Flying and Swimming ReptilesPterosaurs, plesiosaurs and the sea monsters that were not dinosaurs
- The Great ExtinctionThe asteroid, the volcanoes and who survived
- Dinosaurs and BirdsFeathers, Archaeopteryx and the dinosaurs still alive today