Daily Fact: What creature's name means "terrible lizard"?

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Original photo by empire331/ iStock "Dinosaur" comes from Greek words that mean "terrible lizard." The first dinosaur fossil was discovered in 1677 — not that the man who came upon it realized the magnitude of his find. The English naturalist Robert Plot thought that his discovery had belonged to a giant human, and it wasn't until 1824 that the geologist William Buckland identified the bone for what it was. It took another 18 years for Sir Richard Owen, the most famed paleontologist of his era, to coin the term dinosauria — deinos meaning "terrible" or "fearfully great" in Greek, and sauros meaning "lizard." True lizards and dinosaurs diverged from one another 270 million years ago, but the name stuck nevertheless.  Suffice to say that the schoolteacher who called a young Owen "impudent" would have been surprised by his lasting scientific contributions, which also include describing many new species and founding London's Natural History Museum. Owen later went on to feud with none other than Charles Darwin over their respective views on evolution. Owen developed his own influential theory of how animals developed, and disagreed with how Darwin interpreted it in On the Origin of Species — as well as with Darwin's entire concept of natural selection. As a result, Owen's scientific reputation has suffered, but we can still thank him for every 7-year-old's favorite word.   Land-dwelling dinosaurs and humans lived on Earth at the same time. Land-dwelling dinosaurs and humans lived on Earth at the same time.

The spiked tail of a stegosaurus is called a __. The spiked tail of a stegosaurus is called a __. Numbers Don't Lie Named species of non-avian dinosaurs 700 Minutes of dinosaur footage in "Jurassic Park" 14 Estimated weight (in tons) of Argentinosaurus, the largest known dinosaur 75 Years dinosaurs lived on Earth 165 million Dinosaurs aren't considered extinct. Not fully, anyway. While the vast majority of our prehistoric friends did indeed die out after an asteroid likely hit the planet about 65 million years ago, some persisted — and today we call them birds. There are 10,000 species of dinosaurs alive today, none of which are as fearsome as a Tyrannosaurus rex but all of whom are marvels of evolution. The ancestors of modern birds survived while other dinosaurs died out in part by shrinking their size and exploiting a different, less-competitive ecological niche than their bulkier, land-dwelling relatives. Between the dinosaurs of old and the birds of today was the Archaeopteryx, a "transitional fossil" with both avian and reptilian features that lived some 150 million years ago.    You might also like 6 Fascinating Facts About the World of Dinosaurs Here are six fascinating facts about dinosaurs that debunk long-lasting myths — and explain why paleontology is one of the most exciting scientific fields today.

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