How were Dinosaur fossils only discovered in the 1800’s? Did no one prior to this time period come across them?
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It’s not accurate to say that dinosaurs were only discovered in the 1800s.
Robert Plot, in 1677, is credited with discovering the first dinosaur fossil, but he only speculated that it was the remains of a giant human. There was no such word as ‘dinosaur’ yet.
William Buckland, an Oxford professor of geology, attributed the bones to a larger reptilian creature in 1824, after discovering more bones of what would turn out to be the same creature Plot had discovered — he called it ‘Megalosaurus’, but the word ‘dinosaur’ itself still hadn’t been created.
That would come in 1842 courtesy of Sir Richard Owen, who sorted the bones into the fossil family ‘dinosauria’, and would later found London’s Natural History Museum in 1881.
[https://www.discovery.com/science/First-Dinosaur-Fossil-Name](https://www.discovery.com/science/First-Dinosaur-Fossil-Name)
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