The meaning of ‘dinosaur’

The name dinosaur is derived from two Greek words: deinos meaning ‘fearfully great’ and sauros meaning ‘lizard’. It was coined by the English anatomist Richard Owen in 1842. Owen recognized that the huge fossilized bones unearthed at several places in nineteenth-century England were markedly different from the bones of the other existing reptiles.

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Sharks are more ancient than dinosaurs

Sharks are fish which have cartilages rather than bones. These fish evolved earlier than dinosaurs, which were reptiles. The fossil records show that sharks existed about 400 million years ago. Dinosaurs were found during the Triassic period, i.e. about 225 million years ago.

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