The term dinosaur (Greek: deinòs – „terrible”; sauros – „lizard”) was used for the first time by a British anatomist and paleonthologist, Richard Owen, in 1842. It was used to name the animals which appeared on the planet Earth in the Triassic, and died out in the late Cretaceous, at the end of the Mesozoic era.

At the end of the Cretaceous, about 65 million years ago, a disaster level extinction resulted in the end of the domination of dinosaurs on all continents.

All that we know about dinosaurs is based upon the found skeletons and other fossils.

The findings of dinosaurs so far prove that they were the largest land animals that have ever walked this planet.