Walking With Dinosaurs is back on BBC One for the first time in 25 years, just in time for National Dinosaur Day which is on Sunday 1 June.
And because there's so much interest in dinosaurs – more than 400,000 TikTok posts for a start – even they can be the subject of fake news, with some posts suggesting that dinosaurs survived well into the 20th Century.
This included one image featuring an ex-US president that went viral last year. Take a look at what happened - and find out how you can avoid getting tricked by fake online posts.
Did former US President Theodore Roosevelt really hunt a triceratops?
Short answer: no!
This image showing a man standing over a lifeless triceratops was posted on X in May 2024 - we featured it in our Fake News quiz that month.
The caption, which was originally in Italian, stated: "This is the photo of the last known triceratops specimen. He was hunted in 1908 for the value of his antlers."
The original X post went on to gain more than 400k views and people also shared it on other social media platforms including Facebook, where some of the captions claimed that the man in the image was former US president Theodore Roosevelt.
How do we know the image is fake?
Well firstly, if you take a look at a reliable source you would discover that it's believed dinosaurs became extinct 65 million years ago. Which is a long time before 1908 when it's claimed this image was taken!
A reverse image search is another useful way of determining whether what you are seeing is real. According to fact-checking site Snopes, the original source of the image was an Instagram user who posted it in February 2015, with the caption: "Fun fact: Theodore Roosevelt (the 26th US president) was an avid big game hunter. #nofilter #unedited #biggame #hunting #teddy #Roosevelt #president #theodoreroosevelt #dinosaur #triceratops #photoshop #funny #jurassicpark #jurassicworld #dino."
Hashtags can be another good way of working out whether an image is real. The inclusion of #photoshop, #funny and #jurassicpark in this case would suggest that all is not as it seems.
Alongside hashtags, another way of checking the authenticity of an image is to have a look at the comments section where content creators sometimes add additional details about their posts.
Interestingly, a real image of film director Steven Spielberg on the set of Jurassic Park - that was seemingly used in the Roosevelt image - also went viral in 2014. A Facebook humour account shared it with accompanying text suggesting that the director was also a hunter who had killed the triceratops.
That post was shared over 31,000 times and had more than 5,000 comments with some convinced it was genuine and commenting they would no longer watch his films. Others reminded readers that dinosaurs had been extinct for many millions of years.
Why do posts go viral?
Posts that carry misinformation often go viral because they contain images and stories that are exaggerated and outrageous to deliberately hook our attention.
The original Roosevelt and Spielberg posts were parody. They took a real situation (hunters posing with animals they had killed on social media) and replaced it with something absurd (a dinosaur). Some people enjoy joining in with the joke, and pretend it is true when sharing. But other people may not read the post in full and get angry and share it, believing it to be true.
People’s anger when commenting on the posts shows how fake news can hijack your brain and make you consider sharing content before first checking whether it's true.
How can you avoid getting caught out by fake posts?
Remember to always check the facts - this way any misinformation in your head becomes extinct.
Make sure you:
- Check the source of a story. Who’s posting and why? Is it genuine or a joke?
- Check the replies. They might show a different side to the story!
- Check any images. You can do a reverse image search to find out where they came from.
In the meantime, you can find out more dinosaur facts from a reliable source by watching Walking With Dinosaurs, Sundays on BBC One and also on BBC iPlayer.
This article was published in May 2025.
Not sure if the news you’re seeing on social media is true or false? Can you always tell if the things you see online are real or fake? Learn how to get the other side of the story with our quizzes, videos and explainers.
