With the school holidays almost upon us, many parents will be planning a family fun day out or two - and what better way to entertain dinosaur-mad kids than with a trip to see Dinosaur World Live? This award-winning family show takes you on a prehistoric adventure, introducing you to a host of impressive creatures from the tiny Microraptor to the flesh-munching T-rex. It also features Giraffatitan, a gentle giant that ate plants. In tribute to this peaceful sauropod, this post looks at eight herbivore dinosaurs and their preferred plants. 

Ankylosaurus

Ankylosaurus was a Late Cretaceous dinosaur that lived in what is now North America. Being one of the shorter dinosaurs, it grazed on plants that grew low to the ground, eating ferns, shrubs and even fruit. It would have needed to eat about 60kg of food a day - around the same as a modern elephant. 

Brachiosaurus

This Jurassic dinosaur was tall enough to reach the highest leaves of trees. Its preferred food was the leaves of ginkgo, conifers and tree ferns. Brachiosaurus couldn’t chew, so it had to swallow its food whole. 

Triceratops

Another Cretaceous dinosaur, Triceratops is thought to have been able to eat both low-growing and higher vegetation. In addition to feasting on ferns and cycads - palm-like plants with thick woody stems - some scientists think Triceratops may have used its horned head and large body to bring down trees such as palms or small conifers and eat the leaves. 

Giraffatitan

Like Brachiosaurus, Giraffatitan had a long neck that enabled it to reach the foliage that other, smaller dinosaurs couldn’t. This meant it could crop the topmost leaves from conifers and ginkgo. Meeting its energy demands required Giraffatitan to eat around 182kg of food every day.

Stegosaurus

A slow-moving dinosaur of the Late Jurassic period, Stegosaurus munched on plants such as ferns, mosses, cycads, horsetails and fruit. It used its beak to snip leaves from its preferred trees and shrubs, which it then ground down with peg-like teeth further back in its jaws. 

Scelidosaurus

Roaming coastal areas in the Early Jurassic, Scelidosaurus was a small herbivore that - like many of the other plant-eaters of the dinosaur age - ate mostly low-lying plants such as ferns and cycads. Some scientists suggest that it may have eaten seaweeds too, due to its shoreline habitat. 

Maiasaura

Maiasaura was a Late Cretaceous dinosaur from a group of duck-billed animals known as hadrosaurs. Its diet consisted of fibrous plants, rotting wood, tree bark, leaves and flowering plants. All that chewing wore through a lot of teeth - Maiasaura had hundreds of them that were constantly replaced as each set wore down. 

Titanosaurus

For a long time it was thought that grass and dinosaurs never coexisted, but in 2005 scientists found at least five types of grass in the fossilised poop of a Titanosaurus. These giants also ate palms and conifers - grass wasn’t a large part of their diet because they didn’t have the grinding-style teeth that are good for grazing. 

Meet dinosaurs near you

If you’d like to learn more about your favourite dinosaurs on a family day out, don’t miss Dinosaur World Live, which is touring the UK until 31 August 2025. Simply search ‘family show near me’ to find out if it’s coming to a theatre near you and book tickets online.