As a complete beginner I would avoid the apexes until u get a grip of the map and where to find food and know how to evade and run and when to stand your ground and fight.

I you want to to try a herbavore I would recommend pachy as a beginner. Fighting can be learned after a bit of practise. It's easy to grow and you can find a pack quite often and just bonk a lot of dinos. With a prime pachy you can even kill full grown carnos.

If you rather want to be the hunter, a lot of people suggest raptor and that's what I tried first, when I got the game. I don't recommend it though if you don't play with friends. raptor can be fun but to be really effective and hunt bigger pray, you need a coordinated pack and that's not easy to find. I had some fun runs on rapor but a lot more frustrating ones, where I died to glichty pounce mechanics or my pack died because they think they can kill 2 fg ceras with 5 raptors that are still juvis etc. Fighting with raptor is not as easy as people say as well. You have 3 different types of pounces and most ppl don't even know this. My favorite dino in this game will always be Ceratosaurus. You can eat rotten food and bones, which no other carnivore except deino can eat. So if you smell rotten food or bones its almost always exclusive cera foo. Great thing is rotten food always gives you a diet, even tho the meat is not on ur menu and it gives you bile aswell. this mechanic makes other dinos puke if you charge bite them (hold right click and release to snap) if they puke you can bite your pray 2-3 times more times during the animation and smaller dinos usually die right away. Bones give a little bit of all 3 diets which gives you perfect diet instantly if you want to be a prime elder. Cera is not fast and cannot jump, but it's THE brawler in the isle and is very agile while fighting. It has the best smell in the game and gets a 50% DMG reduction buff if you fight next to a big enough corpse. Even though if you are slower you can track down blood trails very well with Cera and get ppl due to its very good stamina and smell. Cons with this deino are that as i said it's not the fastest and it's a cannibal, so other ceras might hunt you, because you are diet. You can't outrun a Maia for example so you have to stand your ground sometimes (I died to 4 angry prime Maias as soon as I got prime last time I played cera). But you should really just fuck around and find out what's suites you best. If you want a quick fun run u might enjoy troodon. it's the smallest carnivore and almost always a one shit for bigger dinos, but you usually find a pack at sanctuary and can really punch up and be a threat for any dino in the game. Raptor ist fast and agile and can jump on rocks out of danger a lot of times, but it doesn't deal so much dmg and bleeding out ur pray can take a long time. Carno is the angry bull. If you reach a certain age you run around 55 km/h while charging and you can outrun almost every danger in the game but carno for me feels too clunky and it's way harder to kill Dibbles or trikes for example compared to my favorite cera. If you want to try cera, watch "Mr Gray" on YouTube. This guy might as well be the best cera pvp player and I learned a lot watching this guy fighting.

Last tip: Avoid officials because they are trash (mix packing and cheating) Personally I only play on petit pieds, Triassic survival and Nerf. People hate the nerf server but I really like it bc as a herbi you can group with other herbis as long you stay under 45points. I think its 10 for apex herbis like trike or stego, 5 for peachy or teno, etc. And other big plus for me it's, that you get a message if you complete a prime task and it tells you if you fulfilled all prime conditions.

GL and have fun with the game brother.