We’ve been having dinosaur fun lately, which led to the question: How big were these giant reptiles, really? It’s hard for kids to have any sort of scale, since most dino toys are tot-sized. So we armed ourselves with a library book, yard stick, masking tape, and a marker, and set outside to find out.

We started with a fairly mid-sized dinosaur, the Plateosaurus, who came in at a respectable 26 feet long. Already this was quite big!

Next up was Stegosaurus, measuring a full 30 feet long. Travis couldn’t believe it and loved helping me press the tape down onto the sidewalk.

We added a Travis-sized piece of masking tape for a true comparison. Impressive!

Now for the real mind-blower: Argentinosaurus was a whopping 100 feet. I was almost too tired to contemplate putting down that much tape. But we did it. Here’s Travis at the far end to show how big the dino was – look how far away he is!

We labeled each piece of tape with the dinosaur’s name and size. Travis loved scribbling along his archaeological “notes” on the tape as well.

Our neighbors thought we were adorable, and this was a blast!