Clearing something narrowly is worth points
Pass within a hair of a cactus and the close call counter ticks up and you get a small bonus. Which means the safe enormous jump is the wrong jump, and you end up deliberately cutting it fine, and then you die. That is the loop.
Late jumps are forgiven, a bit
There is a fraction of a second after you leave the ground where a jump still registers. It is small, it is intentional, and it is why a run that felt impossible sometimes works. Hold the key for a full arc, tap it for a hop.
Night falls
Past a certain distance the colours invert and stay inverted for a while. Nothing else changes, but everything feels faster, and most people lose their run within about ten seconds of the switch.
Why a dinosaur at all
It appears when the browser cannot reach the network, and the joke is being stuck in prehistoric times with no connection. It lives inside the browser rather than loading from anywhere, which is the only way a game can exist on an error page. Type chrome://dino to open it without disconnecting.
For something slower that punishes planning instead of reflexes, there is google snake. For a wall to break, google block breaker.
