What Does 'Dinosaur' Mean?

Question

What Does 'Dinosaur' Mean?

7 Answers

Answer Question

Answer 1

The word "dinosaur" comes from two Greek words. The first is deinos, which means huge or terrible. The second is sauros, meaning lizard.

So, if you take it literally, a dinosaur is a huge or terrible lizard.

Answer 2

Origin of the Term

The word "dinosaur" was given in 1842 by Sir Richard Owen and is derived from the Greek word deinos which means "terrible, powerful, wondrous" and sauros, meaning "lizard".

Put those together and you get a terrible, powerful, wondrous lizard.

Discovery of the Dinosaurs

It was Sir Richard Owen who found and identified some of the first dinosaur fossils. They were teeth.

They were pretty big, too. He studied many types of animals and was pretty sure that these teeth did not belong to any living animal today.

He did, however, think that it was similar to a lizard's tooth. So he named the dinosaurs.

This discovery caused many others to be curious, and they too began looking for dinosaurs.

Are There Dinosaurs In The Bible?

There are, but they aren't called dinosaurs, and are known as the behemoth and the leviathan instead.

It's in the book of Job (chapter 40, verse 15 - 24 and chapter 41, verses 1 - 10.)

Some versions say that they are an elephant or an alligator but if you remember the elephant's tail it is very small not like the tail of a cedar that the King James Bible says it is like.

Then in verse 19 of chapter 41 it says the leviathan spits fire from its mouth, I know that alligators can't do that. Just thought you would like to know.

Answer 3

The word dinosaur is Greek for “terrible lizard” and for many people
the term suggests huge creatures with horns, sharp teeth and long tails.

Believe it or not, some of the first dinosaurs, called thecodonts, were no bigger than turkeys. Thecodonts lived over 200 million years ago.

Answer 4

The word dinosaur means " terrible lizard"

Answer 5

The term "dinosaur" originates from two Greek words meaning "terrible lizards" and was invented by the British comparative anatomist Richard Owen in 1842 to symbolise three known, impressively-large fossil reptiles found in the English countryside.

They are known as the carnivore Megalosaurus, the duck-billed Iguanodon, and the armoured Hylaeosaurus.

Dinosaurs were the relics of the past, often gigantic carnivorous or herbivorous reptiles that primarily existed during the Mesozoic Age.

They were animals with vertebrae and primarily dominated the terrestrial ecosystem for 160 million years.

The last of the Cretaceous Period, 65 million years ago witnessed the dinosaurs yield to a catastrophic extinction, which finished their supremacy on land.

Taxonomists believe modern birds to be the straight descendants of the ropod dinosaurs. They were also termed as Prehistoric reptiles known as the winged pterosaurs and the aquatic ichthyosaurs.

Answer 6

'Dinosaur' actually means 'terrible lizard' and they were so called because they were reptiles, similar to lizards, but their size would make them terrifying to humans, so they were in fact 'terrible lizards'.

Although not all dinosaurs were massive, most were.

However, they were also one of the first animals who could survive well on earth and in evolution they are very important.

Dinosaurs and Birds

One particular dinosaur, the archaeopterix, lived between 160 and 140 million years ago and although tiny (it was around the size of a modern chicken) it is thought that it is actually the 'missing link' between dinosaurs and birds, and is in fact the ancestor of the earliest form of bird.

When Did The Dinosaurs Live?

It is thought that dinosaurs became extinct around 65 million years ago, so they existed on earth between 75 and 95 million years, which is quite a feat.

Why Did They Die Out?

Their extinction arose from climate changes which were caused by a meteorite which hit the earth around 65 million years ago. This destroyed their natural habitat and so they died out.

Answer 7

I heard that it meant 'giant lizard'.