September/21/2019
Do you know who invented the term Dinosauria, which is the formal term for dinosaurs? In 1842, the British biologist and paleontologist Richard Owen came up with the term by combining the Greek deinos, meaning fearfully great, and sauros, meaning lizard.
In Japanese, dinosaur is translated as 恐竜, which means a fearful dragon. I don’t know why, but dragon (竜), not lizard, is used in the Japanese word for dinosaur. Interestingly, in Korean and Chinese, the word dragon is used as well. Indeed, dragons and dinosaurs are similar in that they’re really big, strong and mysterious. It was a good idea to use the word for dragon in the word for dinosaur. read more