Invariant mass distributions of jet pairs (dijets) produced in LHC proton–proton collisions at a centre-of-mass energy √s=7 TeV have been studied using a data set corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 1.0 fb-1 recorded in 2011 by ATLAS. Dijet masses up to ∼4 TeV are observed in the data, and no evidence of resonance production over background is found. Limits are set at 95% C.L. for several new physics hypotheses: excited quarks are excluded for masses below 299 TeV, axigluons are excluded for masses below 3.32 TeV, and colour octet scalar resonances are excluded for masses below 1.92 TeV.