Published 09/2019- updated 09/18/2026
DRAGON –THE WORD “DINOSAUR”
The word dinosaur is surprisingly recent. For most of human history, no one could have called an animal a “dinosaur,” because the word did not exist.
In 1842, British anatomist and paleontologist Richard Owen introduced the scientific name Dinosauria to group together several remarkable fossil reptiles that shared important anatomical characteristics.¹ The name came from the Greek words deinos and sauros and is commonly translated “terrible lizard,” although deinos can convey the sense of something fearfully great, powerful, or wondrous.
Owen originally established Dinosauria around three genera already known from fossils: Megalosaurus, Iguanodon, and Hylaeosaurus.¹ These animals had been discovered and scientifically described before the word dinosaur existed. Megalosaurus, for example, was formally described by William Buckland in 1824, nearly two decades before Owen coined the term Dinosauria.²
WHAT DID PEOPLE CALL THEM BEFORE 1842?
Long before scientists created the category Dinosauria, cultures throughout the world recorded traditions about enormous creatures commonly translated into English as dragons.
People had also been encountering large fossil bones for centuries, probably millennia, without the terminology or classifications used by modern paleontology. Some of these remains were historically identified as the bones of dragons.
China provides an especially interesting example. Ancient Chinese writings contain references to the discovery of “dragon bones.” The fourth-century historian Chang Qu recorded the discovery of such bones in what is now Sichuan Province, an account that has subsequently been discussed by historians of paleontology as a possible early record of dinosaur fossils.¹
“Dragon bones,” however, was not a technical paleontological classification. The term was applied to different kinds of fossil remains, including fossil mammals. Therefore, we cannot simply assume that every historical reference to dragon bones represents dinosaur fossils.
Nevertheless, the historical connection between dinosaur remains and dragon terminology is real.
DINOSAURS WERE STILL CALLED “DRAGONS”
Interestingly, dragon terminology did not immediately disappear when Owen introduced the word Dinosauria.
Even during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, dinosaurs were sometimes described using terms such as “earth dragons,” “land-dragons,” and “river dragons.” British zoologist William Plane Pycraft, who worked at the Natural History Museum, used dragon terminology when writing about dinosaurs for general audiences. He even referred to Cetiosaurus as **“an ancient British river dragon.”**³
This does not mean that dragon and dinosaur were universally interchangeable scientific terms. It does demonstrate that the historical boundary between the older language of dragons and the newly created scientific term dinosaur was not as absolute as we might imagine today.
The progression is fascinating:
Dragon terminology → discovery and description of enormous fossil reptiles → Richard Owen coins Dinosauria in 1842 → dragon terminology continues alongside the new scientific terminology.
A NEW NAME FOR OLD BONES
Owen did not discover the first dinosaur in 1842. His contribution was recognizing that several previously discovered fossil animals shared anatomical characteristics and belonged together in a distinct group.
The Biodiversity Heritage Library explains:
“The name Dinosauria is first published in Owen’s Report on British Fossil Reptiles, which was published in 1842.”¹
Owen used Megalosaurus, Iguanodon, and Hylaeosaurus to establish his new group.¹
That distinction is important:
The animals did not suddenly appear in 1842. The word did.
Consequently, arguing that ancient historical writings could not describe dinosaur-like animals simply because they never use the word dinosaur would be anachronistic. Ancient writers obviously could not use terminology that would not be invented until thousands of years later.
The same principle applies to the Bible. The English word dinosaur does not appear because the term did not exist until the nineteenth century. Its absence therefore tells us nothing, by itself, about whether biblical writers described large animals that today might remind us of dinosaurs or other extinct reptiles.
The more interesting historical question is not:
“Did ancient people use the word dinosaur?”
They obviously did not.
The better question is:
What animals were ancient people describing when they wrote about the enormous creatures they called dragons?
The widespread historical traditions of dragons do not, by themselves, prove that humans encountered living dinosaurs. But neither should those accounts be dismissed simply because ancient people did not call such creatures by a scientific name that Richard Owen would not invent until 1842.
Sources
¹ Biodiversity Heritage Library. “The Birth of Dinosaurs: Richard Owen and Dinosauria.”
https://blog.biodiversitylibrary.org/2015/10/the-birth-of-dinosaurs-richard-owen-and-dinosauria.html
² Natural History Museum. “Dinosauria: How the ‘terrible lizards’ got their name.”
https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/how-dinosaurs-got-their-name.html
³ Cambridge University Press. Reimagining Dinosaurs in Late Victorian and Edwardian Literature, discussion of W. P. Pycraft and the use of “earth dragons,” “land-dragon,” and “river dragon.”
https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/reimagining-dinosaurs-in-late-victorian-and-edwardian-literature/reclaiming-authority-henry-neville-hutchinson-popular-science-and-the-construction-of-the-dinosaur/4BD88E79DA7736183A8FE8E9E982B490
⁴ Smithsonian Institution. Historical chronology of dinosaur paleontology, including early Chinese reports of “dragon” bones.
https://repository.si.edu/bitstream/handle/10088/8032/paleo_MKB-S_1997f.pdf
