Using this information, Owen determined that the three formed a special group of reptiles, which he named Dinosauria. The word comes from the ancient Greek word deinos (“terrible”) and sauros (“lizard” or “reptile”).
Did you know?
Despite the fact that dinosaurs no longer walk the Earth as they did during the Mesozoic Era, unmistakable traces of these enormous reptiles can be identified in their modern-day descendants: birds.
Since then, dinosaur fossils have been found all over the world and studied by paleontologists to find out more about the many different types of these creatures that existed. Scientists have traditionally divided the dinosaur group into two orders: the “bird-hipped” Ornithischia and the “lizard-hipped” Saurischia.
From there, dinosaurs have been broken down into numerous genera (e.g. Tyrannosaurus or Triceratops) and each genus into one or more species. Some dinosaurs were bipedal, which means they walked on two legs. Some walked on four legs (quadrupedal), and some were able to switch between these two walking styles. Some dinosaurs were covered with a type of body armor, and some probably had feathers, like their modern bird relatives. Some moved quickly, while others were lumbering and slow. Most dinosaurs were herbivores, or plant-eaters, but some were carnivorous and hunted or scavenged other dinosaurs in order to survive.
At the time the dinosaurs arose, all of the Earth’s continents were connected together in one land mass, now known as Pangaea, and surrounded by one enormous ocean. Pangaea began to break apart into separate continents during the Early Jurassic Period (around 200 million years ago), and dinosaurs would have seen great changes in the world in which they lived over the course of their existence.