---
title: "Dinosaur Size Comparison: Next to a Person | Fossil Wharf"
description: "How big was T. rex next to you? Compare up to four dinosaurs and other prehistoric animals to scale beside a 1.7 m person, with museum-cited sizes."
url: https://fossilwharf.me/dinosaur-size-comparison/
---

To scale · museum-cited sizes

# Dinosaur size comparison

How big was T. rex next to you? “SUE”, the Field Museum's T. rex, is more than 12.2 m (40 ft) long and 4.0 m (13 ft) tall at the hip: taller at the hip than two 1.7 m people stacked head to toe. Pick up to four prehistoric animals and see them drawn to the same scale beside a 1.7 m person.

## How the size comparison works

Every animal is drawn at the same number of pixels per metre, with a 1.7 m (5 ft 7 in) person at the start of each row, and a scale bar underneath. Where a source gives a range, the drawing uses the top of it and the table gives the whole range: megalodon is drawn at 24.3 m, the largest published estimate, although its biggest museum teeth suggest 14.2 to 15.3 m.

- **Lengths and heights** come from the museum that holds the specimen, the Natural History Museum's Dino Directory or a peer-reviewed paper, named in the table with a link.
- **Heights** are drawn to the cited figure where there is one: SUE's hip, Sophie's height, the Berlin Giraffatitan's head, the mammoth's shoulder. Otherwise the silhouette's height is only approximate.
- The silhouettes are simple drawings for scale, not scientific reconstructions. Animals without a solid museum or peer-reviewed size are left out.

## Sources

Field Museum (SUE, FMNH PR 2081); Natural History Museum, London (Sophie, NHMUK PV R36730; Dippy; the Dino Directory; ichthyosaurs, plesiosaurs, pterosaurs and mammoths); Museum für Naturkunde Berlin (Giraffatitan mount); Engelman 2023, Diversity 15(3):318 (Dunkleosteus); Witton & Habib 2010, PLoS ONE 5:e13982 (Quetzalcoatlus wingspan); Shimada 2019, Perez et al. 2021 and Shimada et al. 2025 (megalodon); NOAA Fisheries (white shark, blue whale). Each animal's links are in the table above.

## Questions

**How big was T. rex compared with a person?**

SUE, the largest T. rex specimen, is more than 12.2 m long and 4.0 m tall at the hip, says the Field Museum: about seven people lying head to toe, and more than twice a 1.7 m person's height at the hip.

**Was megalodon bigger than a blue whale?**

No. Even the largest estimate for megalodon, about 24.3 m (Shimada et al. 2025), is shorter than a blue whale, which NOAA Fisheries says grows up to 110 ft (33.5 m).

**How big was Velociraptor really?**

About 1.8 m long and 7 kg, says the Natural History Museum, roughly half the size the Jurassic Park films showed.