When were dinosaurs first discovered?

Question

I was just watching a show that was talking about dinosaur bones, and I was wondering when we first realized that dinosaurs once existed?

Answer 1

People had been finding their bones for millenia, but didn't realize what they were. It's believed that dinosaur bones may have been resoponsible for some of the legends about giants that werer so common in ancient times.

The first time anybody realized that a dinosaur bone had belonged to an extinct creature was in the 1850's. I have a book somewhere that talks about it, but I can't find it to look up specifics.

Answer 2

Dinosaur fossils have been known for millennia, although their true nature was not recognized. The Chinese, whose own word for dinosaur is konglong ("terrible dragon"), considered them to be dragon bones and documented them as such. For example, Hua Yang Guo Zhi, a book written by Zhang Qu during the Western Jin Dynasty, reported the discovery of dragon bones at Wucheng in Sichuan Province. In Europe, dinosaur fossils were generally believed to be the remains of giants and other creatures killed by the Great Flood.

Megalosaurus was the first dinosaur to be formally described, in 1677, when part of a bone was recovered from a limestone quarry at Cornwell near Oxford, England.