"Dinosaur" is a term freely used and, more often, misused by the public.
A dinosaur was not any four-legged creature that lived long ag
o. Neither was a dinosaur a flying reptile, or pterosaur, frequently referred to incorrectly as a bird.
Nor were marine reptiles (Fig. 10) like plesiosaurs, icthyosaurs, and mosasaurs swimming dinosaurs. And of course, the famous finback reptile Dimetrodon of Permian time was not a dinosaur either.
Although it is difficult to get a precise definition of a dinosaur that all paleontologists will accept, a general description is not too hard to provide.
The first dinosaur to be recognized as a giant extinct reptile was Iguanodon, found in England in 1822 by Mary Ann Mantell, a fossil hunter and the wife of Dr. Gideon Mantell, who later described it. In 1842, the noted British anatomist Sir Richard Owen, oddly an opponent of Darwin's Theory of Evolution, gave the official name "Dinosauria" to Iguanodon and two other extinct giant reptiles, Megalosaurus and Hylaeosaurus. From that time forth, dinosaurs have been a fixture in the public consciousness.
Whether seen as failures or successes, they have often appeared in our cartoons, our advertising, and as toys.
A dinosaur was not any four-legged creature that lived long ag
o. Neither was a dinosaur a flying reptile, or pterosaur, frequently referred to incorrectly as a bird.Nor were marine reptiles (Fig. 10) like plesiosaurs, icthyosaurs, and mosasaurs swimming dinosaurs. And of course, the famous finback reptile Dimetrodon of Permian time was not a dinosaur either.
Although it is difficult to get a precise definition of a dinosaur that all paleontologists will accept, a general description is not too hard to provide.
The first dinosaur to be recognized as a giant extinct reptile was Iguanodon, found in England in 1822 by Mary Ann Mantell, a fossil hunter and the wife of Dr. Gideon Mantell, who later described it. In 1842, the noted British anatomist Sir Richard Owen, oddly an opponent of Darwin's Theory of Evolution, gave the official name "Dinosauria" to Iguanodon and two other extinct giant reptiles, Megalosaurus and Hylaeosaurus. From that time forth, dinosaurs have been a fixture in the public consciousness.
Whether seen as failures or successes, they have often appeared in our cartoons, our advertising, and as toys.
