Richard Owen coined the term ‘Dinosauria’ to group three giant reptiles

Dinosaur names have shifted from ancient languages to pop culture references

Early dinosaur names used Greek and Latin roots, often just attaching “-saurus” (lizard) to another word describing a notable trait. Over time, this convention has evolved to incorporate the names of where the discovery was made, local languages, and even celebrities.

Dinosaurs are defined by specific traits that many dinosaur-like creatures lack

Although pterodactyls, mosasaurs, crocodilians, and other organisms are mistaken for dinosaurs, they do not have upright legs or specific hip structures characteristic of the terrestrial reptiles. Some, like the Dimetrodon, are more closely related to humans than dinosaurs.

Uncovering the evolution of history's largest dinosaurs

This article details how sauropods—the dinosaurs that Little Foot would call longnecks—repeatedly evolved to attain such colossal sizes, towering over other land critters, including tyrannosaurs and mammoths. Sauropods were giant, long-necked...

Air sacs and lightweight bones helped some dinosaurs grow to enormous sizes

After the Triassic extinctions, new species with birdlike anatomy evolved from smaller, early dinosaurs. This anatomy allowed for more efficient breathing and lighter skeletons, favoring the evolution of larger organisms.

View a directory of more than 300 dinosaurs

This resource details each dinosaur's taxonomy, type, diet, and habitat, from Aardonyx to Zuniceratops. More well-researched dinosaurs include information on when they were discovered alongside their size, behaviors, and other noteworthy findings.

Unlike the roars in movies, dinosaurs likely cooed, rumbled, and boomed

Fossil evidence and CT scans suggest that many dinosaurs produced low-frequency sounds using resonating crests, closed-mouth vocalizations, or organs similar to those of birds and crocodiles. Larger sounds would not have been helpful for sneakily hunting prey.

Civilizations of the past mistook dinosaur fossils for dead mythological creatures

Without knowledge of evolution or extinction, people believed such fossils were the bones of massive animals no one had ever seen alive, including dragons and giants. It was not until the science of paleontology and studies of extinction that these ideas were overturned definitively.

Dinosaurs ranged from the size of chickens to multistory buildings

The largest known dinosaur, Argentinosaurus, was about 39 meters long and outweighed a Boeing 737. Species like Parvicursor and Epidexipteryx were less than 45 centimeters long, though the actual smallest dinosaur is likely lost to history.

Pterosaurs were dinosaur cousins that ruled the skies

Giant flying lizards or massive leathery birds? Pterosaurs were neither. What they were were the first vertebrates to fly through the skies. This National Geographic video discusses the anatomical features that made their flight possible, how big these awesome creatures could get, and which species was named after a legendary vampire.

Dinosaurs emerged 245 million years ago when Earth’s continents were still conjoined

Once the supercontinent split apart, dinosaurs evolved into thousands of species as they adapted to their changing environments. All non-avian dinosaurs went extinct about 66 million years ago following an asteroid impact, while avian dinosaurs evolved into today’s birds.

What did the world of the dinosaurs look like?

Mesozoic means "middle life" and this is the time of the dinosaurs. This era includes the Triassic, Jurassic, and Cretaceous Periods, names that may be familiar to you. It ended with a massive meteorite impact that caused a mass extinction, wiping out the dinosaurs.

Dinosaurs suffered from cancer, arthritis, and infections seen in modern animals

Using CT scans and advanced pathology techniques, paleopathologists have identified respiratory illnesses, malignant osteosarcoma, and other diseases in dinosaurs. The research has helped show how many of these ailments are not exclusively modern phenomena.

Herd behavior has been seen in 193-million-year-old dinosaur fossils

Scientists excavated eggs, juveniles, and adult remains in Patagonia, all arranged by age group. The organization into structured groups may have contributed to evolutionary success by consolidating eggs in one location to make defending them easier.

Huge tyrannosaur wore a fuzzy coat

It’s not your dad’s tyrannosaur: Yutyrannus huali, a newly discovered ancestor of Tyrannosaurus rex, was covered from head to tail in downy feathers.

Fossilized bite marks suggest some dinosaurs may have engaged in cannibalism

An excavation site near the Colorado-Utah border contained Allosaurus bones with tooth marks of other Allosaurus, which may have occurred in response to a dry season in the area. The Tyrannosaurus and Majungasaurus have also been shown to eat their own.

Millions of years of evolution produced dinosaurs with bizarre features

This list of the 17 weirdest dinosaurs includes a cross between a parrot and a porcupine, a dinosaur whose arms each ended with one finger, a vampire dinosaur, a dinosaur with wings on its legs instead of its arms, and a Harry Potter-inspired “dragon king of Hogwarts.”

T. rex needed the same amount of calories as 80 people every day

Tyrannosaurus rex is the most extensively studied fossil creature ever known. Every year, new research is added to the towering list of papers that try to draw …

Bringing dinosaurs back to Mongolia

The Gobi Desert, which crosses Mongolia and China, was a dinosaur hotspot, offering visitors splendid freshwater lakes and a lush, humid climate. These past verdant vast valleys have become the largest dinosaur fossil reservoir in the world, and with that title comes those seeking to remove such items, whether for personal satisfaction or scientific study. This article explains the fight to restore Mongolia's fossil heritage.

The Bone Wars turned paleontology into a rivalry fraught with public scandal

Othniel Charles Marsh and Edward Drinker Cope were friends-turned-enemies competing for the glory of discovering dinosaurs. It became so intense that when Cope died, he donated his body to science to prove he had a bigger brain than Marsh.

Human ancestors: a guide

Modern humans are not the only creatures classified as part of the Homo genus. This article examines the eight other humans that fall under the Homo umbrella.

Lupus, an autoimmune disease with varied symptoms, was named for wolf bite-like lesions

The 13th-century physician behind the name (lupus is Latin for wolf) named it after a patient he saw who had facial lesions that looked to him like a wolf's bite. Other common symptoms of the disease include extreme fatigue, painful and swollen joints, fevers, and light sensitivity.

Some Pokémon have been named after real and fictional organisms, while some real-world species have been named after Pokémon, such as Chilicola charizard and Binburrum zapdos.

The reptilian conspiracy theory posits that humanoid lizards run the world

Conspiracy theorists believe shape-shifting reptiles have taken human form and gained authority to manipulate human populations. From US politicians to British royalty, could lizard people be holding positions of power?

Tigers emerged much earlier as a species than lions

Both lions and tigers are iconic big cats known for their size and power, but they remain distinct species. Beyond just looking different, they can exhibit very different behaviors. For example, tigers are significantly less social than lions, who live in social matriarchal groups. Tigers and lions are unlikely to ever interact in the wild, but humans have artificially bred them in captivity, creating a "liger."

View some of the species named after David Attenborough

Acisoma attenboroughi is a dragonfly from Madagascar named in honor of Attenborough's 90th birthday. Stating they liked watching Attenborough's documentaries with their family, the discoverer of a flightless weevil from Indonesia named it Trigonopterus attenboroughi in 2014. A Peruvian frog was named Prisimantis attenboroughi in 2014 to honor Attenborough for raising awareness of wildlife conservation.

See how each of the more than two million known species relates to each other—and to common ancestors—in this zoomable tree of life.

JRR Tolkien and CS Lewis met at Oxford and bonded over Norse mythology

The “Lord of the Rings” mastermind and “The Lion, Witch, and the Wardrobe” author were colleagues at Oxford University and shared an appreciation for Norse mythology, which continues to inform the fantasy genre. They were also a part of the same informal literary group, the Inklings, where they’d discuss one another’s works-in-progress.

Corals are themselves not coral reefs—the term refers to the tiny marine invertebrates that build the rigid reef.

Larger animals like giraffes, elephants, and blue whales have developed a unique defense against cancer, a phenomenon known as Peto's Paradox

The animatronic shark from Steven Spielberg's 'Jaws,' the first modern blockbuster, was a complex underwater apparatus called 'Bruce.'

The Dracula character, now seen as the vampire archetype, was inspired by a seafood-induced nightmare its creator experienced.

Lesser-known phobias include turophobia, or the fear of cheese, and nomophobia, the fear of being without your cell phone.

The first robot in literature may have been a 'mechanical man' in 1907's 'Ozma of Oz,' a book in L Frank Baum's 'Wizard of Oz' series.

Salvador Dalí believed he was his own dead brother, who had died nine months before he was born

The hormonal disorder PCOS was renamed PMOS in 2026, a move designed to improve care and research by shifting the focus to the hormonal causes of this condition that affects 1 in 8 women.

In 1963, a basement renovation in Turkey revealed a passageway to a hidden, multilevel underground city that once housed as many as 20,000 people

The American cockroach is actually from Africa, an apparent hitchhiker aboard ships carrying enslaved people, with evidence suggesting the bug may have arrived in the New World as early as the 1600s.

The Great Salt Lake's distinct dual coloration results from high-salinity organisms that only live in the northern portion and produce a purple protein.

Ebola is a filovirus, meaning it resembles a thread under a microscope, though it sometimes twists and can resemble a bowl of spaghetti.

Meet the 56 signers of the Declaration of Independence—most of whom didn't put pen to paper until August 2, 1776—and see their original signatures.

For centuries, it was common to sleep in two shifts: a few hours at the beginning of the night, and a longer period beginning around midnight

El Niño, Spanish for 'the boy,' was named after Jesus Christ because the phenomenon resembled the weather changes observed around Christmastime.

Most of the observable universe's volume consists of voids and supervoids—enormous regions of space with little to no galaxies, stars, or light.

Before humans, the Soviet Union and the United States sent animals—including apes, dogs, and cats—to space during the Space Race.

The term 'algorithm' originated from the Latinized name of al-Khwārizmī, a 9th-century mathematician whose works introduced Arabic numerals and the decimal-based numeral system to Europe and whose treatise 'Al-Jabr' gave algebra its name.

Poison ivy's characteristic rash is caused by an allergic response to an oily compound in the plant called urushiol.

The syncytiotrophoblast is the outer layer of the placenta and the largest human cell, spanning an area about twice that of a king-sized bedsheet.

Search a massive database of over 4 decades of clues from the TV quiz show 'Jeopardy!'

See the 25 of the best photos of auroras from around the world.

The Russia-Ukraine conflict is the largest ground war in Europe since World War II in casualties, forces mobilized, and displacement of civilians.