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The origin of various dinosaur names

Dinosaur, the English word dinosaur, comes from the Greek deinos (meaning terror) Saurosc (meaning lizard or reptile). Dinosaurs (excluding birds) are a group of main dragon reptiles living on land. Their limbs stand upright under their bodies instead of extending to their sides. They appeared in the late Triassic Carney period, and various dinosaurs quickly evolved into different specialized features, showing different body shapes and occupying different niches, and continued to exist in the late Cretaceous Maastricht period. [ 1]

There are many kinds of reptiles that lived in the same period as dinosaurs, such as ichthyosaur, Canglong, plesiosaur, pterodactyl, Panlong and so on. Many mass media often classify them as dinosaurs, but they are not dinosaurs in scientific classification. Ichthyosaurus, black dragon and plesiosaur are all marine reptiles, which do not live on land and do not belong to the main dragon. Pterosaur belongs to the main dragon, which evolved separately from dinosaurs in Triassic, but it was not a terrestrial animal: Panlong lived in Permian and was closely related to mammals.

Dinosaurs are the main terrestrial vertebrates in Mesozoic, especially in Jurassic and Cretaceous. During the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods, when dinosaurs dominated, almost all land animals whose body length was more than 1 m were dinosaurs, so other animals of the same age were limited by their size development and niche. For example, mammals are mostly close to modern rodents and will not exceed the size of cats. They are carnivores and feed on small animals. Repenomamus giganticus, a giant reptile that lived in Cretaceous, is a few exceptions. This giant reptile weighs 12 to 14 kg, and it is known that it will feed on small dinosaurs such as young parrot-billed dinosaurs.

Dinosaur families are extremely large and diverse. Up to 2006, academic research has identified more than 500 genera; It is estimated that the total number of genera that have appeared in the fossil record is about 1850, of which 75% have been found. An early study speculated that there were nearly 3,400 genera of dinosaurs, but most of them could not be preserved in the fossil record. As of September 7, 2008, there were 1047 dinosaur species. Dinosaurs are herbivores, carnivores and omnivores. Some dinosaurs walked on two feet, or on four feet, or like Sharon and Iguanodon, they could switch between two feet and four feet freely. Many dinosaurs had scales, horns or crowns on their heads. Although dinosaurs are famous for their huge size, many dinosaurs are only the size of humans or even smaller. At present, dinosaur fossils have been found on all continents, including Antarctica. No matter their size, dinosaurs have excellent adaptability to land life, but they can't occupy the ecological niche of ocean and flying animals.

The origin of the name

In fact, human beings have a long history of discovering dinosaur fossils. Long before the discovery of Iguanodon, Europeans knew that there were many grotesque huge bone fossils buried underground. It was not until paleontologist Mantel discovered Iguanodon and compared it with iguana that the scientific community initially determined that it was a group of extinct lizard-like reptiles.

1842, British paleontologist Charles Owen coined the word "dinosaur". English dinosaurs came from the Greek deinos (scary) Saurosc (lizard or reptile). For Owen at that time, this "scary lizard" or "scary reptile" refers to an extinct large reptile (actually it is not). In fact, not many dinosaurs were found at that time. Since the discovery of dinosaur fossils in Antarctica in 1989, dinosaur remains have been found in seven continents all over the world. At present, there are at least 650 to 800 genera of dinosaurs described in the world (species and genera in paleontology are not completely different from the classification of modern animals). Later, scholars in China, Japan and other countries translated it into a dinosaur, because there have been legends about dragons in these countries, which think that dragons are the length of scale worms and snakes are another name for dragons.