No. Humans and non-bird dinosaurs never lived at the same time.

Quick Scoop: The Real Timeline

  • Dinosaurs (the classic T. rex, Triceratops, etc.) died out about 66 million years ago at the end of the Cretaceous Period.
  • Our own species, Homo sapiens, only appears in the fossil record roughly 300,000 years ago.
  • That means there is a gap of about 65 million years between the last non-bird dinosaurs and the first humans.

So the Flintstones-style idea of people riding dinosaurs is pure fiction, not science.

But What Was Around With Dinosaurs?

  • Early mammals already existed: they were mostly small, shrew‑like creatures that lived in the shadows of dinosaurs.
  • Crocodile relatives, turtles, and many kinds of lizards and fish also shared the planet with dinosaurs.
  • Birds are considered living dinosaurs (they evolved from small theropod dinosaurs), so in a technical sense dinosaurs are still with us today—as pigeons, chickens, eagles, etc.

Where Humans Fit In

  • After the dinosaurs (except birds) went extinct, mammals slowly diversified and took over many ecological roles.
  • Much, much later, primates evolved, then hominins, and eventually modern humans.
  • By the time humans appeared, the age of the big dinosaurs was already ancient history—closer to us in time are things like mammoths and saber‑toothed cats, not T. rex.

Why People Get Confused

  • Movies, cartoons, and some theme-park or “creation museum” exhibits often show humans and dinosaurs together for dramatic effect.
  • Without a sense of geologic time, “millions of years” can all blur together, making it easy to think everything ancient happened at once.
  • In reality, the time between T. rex and us is far longer than the time between us and the very first human civilizations.

TL;DR: Non-bird dinosaurs went extinct about 66 million years ago, and humans only evolved a few hundred thousand years ago, so we missed each other by tens of millions of years.