Dreaming about dinosaurs: what it means and why it shows up

Dreaming about dinosaurs: the direct answer

Dream interpretation is not prediction and not diagnosis. This article separates what sleep research observes from what popular interpretation associates with the theme, always saying which is which.

Dreaming about a dinosaur does not announce a catastrophe, nor the return of an old problem "the size of a dinosaur", nor is it a sign that you are outdated. The scene tends to appear in phases when something feels too big to handle: a change, a boss, a childhood fear that came back. When the dinosaur chases you, the dream tends to come with the feeling of being small in the face of a problem. When it is calm or a baby, it usually comes with curiosity and even tenderness.

Nor is it only a "kid's dream". Adults often dream about dinosaurs after a movie, one of their child's toys or a visit to a museum.

Read also: Dreaming about a dragon and Dreaming about alligators and crocodiles.

Why the dinosaur gets into the dream

The continuity hypothesis, studied by Michael Schredl and Friedrich Hofmann in 2003, shows that dreams follow what fills waking life. The dinosaur is one of the most present images in childhood and in culture: the cartoon, the school backpack, the toy figures scattered around the living room, the movie franchise that comes back every few years, the fossil hall at the museum. Anyone with a child at home lives with dinosaurs every day.

Tore Nielsen and colleagues, in 2003, listed the typical dreams of university students, and being chased is among the most common. The dinosaur is an ideal pursuer for that plot: enormous, slow enough for the scene to last and impossible to fight.

Sources: Schredl and Hofmann, Continuity between waking activities and dream activities, Consciousness and Cognition, 2003; Nielsen and colleagues, Dreaming, 2003.

Scenes that show up most

If the animal in the dream breathed fire or flew, the scene may belong to dreaming about a dragon. If it had scales and was in the water, see dreaming about alligators and crocodiles.

See also: Dreaming about a unicorn and Dreaming about an eagle.

When to seek professional help

For most people, dreaming about a dinosaur is a vivid dream that passes. In children, nightmares about monsters are common and usually decrease with age. If the scene turns into a recurring nightmare, in a child or an adult, with waking in panic several times a week or fear of going to sleep, talk to a health professional. Frequent nightmares have recognized treatment. See how to have fewer nightmares.

Source: Morgenthaler and colleagues, Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine, 2018.

What dream books have to say

Traditional dream books were written from old lists, and the dinosaur, made popular by movies and school, rarely gets an entry of its own. In O Livro dos Sonhos, a Brazilian dream book, L. P. Baçan includes its closest relative in the popular imagination, the dragon, with a short, positive reading: in life, strength; in love, glory.

Jung recalled that symbols do not fit fixed lists, because each dream is born from the dreamer's life. The dinosaur of a child who just got a toy figure and that of an adult who feels like a "fossil" at a new job do not speak of the same thing, even if the book had one line for both.

Sources: L. P. Baçan, O Livro dos Sonhos, 2014; Jung (ed.), Man and His Symbols.

Freud, Jung and faith on this dream

In Freud's psychoanalysis. In The Interpretation of Dreams, Freud notes that dreams use wild animals to represent passionate impulses, the dreamer's own or those of others the dreamer fears, and that dream material comes from leftovers of the day and from old memories, including childhood ones. A dinosaur chasing an adult may be the fear of someone far too big, from a father to a boss, dressed in the scariest image childhood kept.

In Jung's psychology. Man and His Symbols treats animals in dreams as figures of the instinctive, primitive part of the person, and recalls the myth of the hero swallowed by the monster who comes out transformed. In the Jungian key, the dinosaur, an animal older than humanity itself, may appear as an image of something archaic and strong within the person, something that frightens but also sustains. For Jung, the dream compensates: someone who feels insignificant may dream of the largest animal that ever lived.

In symbols and faith. The dinosaur does not appear in sacred texts or in traditional dictionaries of symbols, but faith has its own giant creatures. In Job 40, God shows Job the Behemoth, an enormous animal that "eats grass like an ox", to remind man of his size before creation. Chevalier and Gheerbrant, in A Dictionary of Symbols, treat monsters as guardians of thresholds, images of the chaos that must be faced for something new to be born.

Bringing both readings together. Science shows the dinosaur's path to the dream: the toy, the movie, the museum, the chase plot. Traditions ask what in your life is too big and too old to ignore. Both questions can be written down when you wake up.

Sources: Freud, Die Traumdeutung, 1900; Jung (ed.), Man and His Symbols; Chevalier and Gheerbrant, A Dictionary of Symbols.

Folk readings of dreaming about dinosaurs

In Brazilian folk reading, a dinosaur chasing you is an old problem coming back or an authoritarian person in your life; a calm dinosaur is strength and protection; a baby dinosaur is a new beginning or a child on the way; a skeleton or fossil is a closed chapter. A green dinosaur is health; a black or gray one calls for attention; many dinosaurs together are big changes coming. These are recent cultural readings, passed along in conversation and online, not predictions. See what dream meanings look like according to science and culture.