Richard Owen coins the word 'dinosaur'

What happened

Until 1842, no one had heard the word dinosaur. The anatomist Richard Owen examined three fossil finds made by other collectors over the previous two decades, Megalosaurus, described by William Buckland in 1824, and Iguanodon and Hylaeosaurus, both described by Gideon Mantell in 1825 and 1833, and recognized shared features linking them as a distinct group unlike any living reptile. He first laid out the idea in a lecture to the British Association in July 1841 that reportedly ran two hours, then formally coined the term Dinosauria in his published report the following year. The Natural History Museum notes that the name is often translated from Greek as terrible lizard, but that Owen himself described the animals instead as fearfully great, a term aimed squarely at their scale rather than their ferocity.

How we know

The Natural History Museum's account of the naming gives the three founding fossils and their original describers and dates, Owen's July 1841 lecture, the 1842 published report that formally introduced Dinosauria, and Owen's own fearfully great phrasing alongside the popular terrible lizard translation.

Sources

• University of California Museum of Paleontology. Richard Owen (1804-1892) (University of California Museum of Paleontology) · Reputable sourceucmp.berkeley.edu · The domain "ucmp.berkeley.edu" is on our Reputable source registry. · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
• Natural History Museum, London. Dinosauria: how the 'terrible lizards' got their name (Natural History Museum) (2024) · Reputable sourcenhm.ac.uk · The domain "nhm.ac.uk" is on our Reputable source registry. · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)