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Were all dinosaurs large?

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Illustration showing various dinosaur species drawn to scale and grouped by geologic era: Late Cretaceous, Early Cretaceous, Jurassic, and Triassic. Dinosaurs range from large species like Brachiosaurus and Tyrannosaurus to smaller ones like Velociraptor and Compsognathus, with a human silhouette included for size comparison. Measurement bars at the bottom indicate 1 meter and 3 feet for scale reference. — dinosaur A selection of dinosaurs grouped by the geologic interval in which they lived.

No, not all dinosaurs were large. While the group includes the largest land animals to have ever lived—such as the massive sauropods like Argentinosaurus and Dreadnoughtus—there was significant diversity in size across the species.123

Many dinosaurs were quite small. For example, members of the genus Compsognathus were roughly the size of a turkey. Similarly, despite their fearsome reputation, velociraptors were not much larger than a turkey, standing under 0.6 meters (2 feet) in height. Even within groups known for their size, such as the titanosaurs, there was variation; the species Shingopana songwensis, for instance, was only about 8 meters (26 feet) long and weighed approximately 5 metric tons, making it one of the smaller members of its group.23