eli5: Why were dinosaurs discovered so late? Really no one before the 19th century came across with one fossil?

Question

It really baffles me that non of the great minds before that period knew they existed

In: Biology

Answer 1

They found fossils before that, they just didn’t think that what they were finding was dinosaur bones. Very large bones would be considered the bones of dragons and giants. Smaller bones would just be bones, maybe bones of something we hadn’t seen before, but that’s different from knowing exactly what.

Herodotus wrote of the remains of marine animals found far inland and considered this to be evidence that the land they were found in was once underwater.