Entanglement is the key quantum resource for improving measurement sensitivity beyond classical limits. However, the production of entanglement in mesoscopic atomic systems has been limited to squeezed states, described by Gaussian statistics. Here, we report on the creation and characterization of non-Gaussian many-body entangled states. We develop a general method to extract the Fisher information, which reveals that the quantum dynamics of a classically unstable system creates quantum states that are not spin squeezed but nevertheless entangled. The extracted Fisher information quantifies metrologically useful entanglement, which we confirm by Bayesian phase estimation with sub–shot-noise sensitivity. These methods are scalable to large particle numbers and applicable directly to other quantum systems.