Why were dinosaurs called dinosaurs?

The word "dinosaur" is a biologist's translation of the English word Dinosauria, which means "horrible lizard".

1. Dinosaurs were diverse and dominant terrestrial vertebrates that appeared in the Mesozoic Era. The word "dinosaur" is a biologist's translation of the English word Dinosauria, which means "scary lizard", not "dragon" in traditional Chinese culture. Dinosaurs dominated the global terrestrial ecosystem for more than 160 million years. Dinosaurs first appeared in the late Triassic period, 230 million years ago, and emerged from the extinction of the Great Dinosauria in the late Cretaceous period, about 65 million years ago, when the end of the Cretaceous extinction event occurred. The fossil of the first ancestor bird, discovered in 1861, is extremely similar to the fossil of the Maximosaurus, with the difference that the fossil of the first ancestor bird has traces of feathers, which suggests that the bird may have been a descendant of the dinosaurs.

2. Dinosaurs (excluding birds) were a group of reptiles that lived on land and had limbs that stood upright under their bodies rather than spread out at the sides. Many prehistoric reptiles are unofficially recognized as dinosaurs by the general public, such as pterodactyls, ichthyosaurs, serpent-necked dinosaurs, cangaroo dinosaurs, and pachycephalosaurs (Heterodontosaurus and Basilosaurus), etc., but scientifically speaking, these are not dinosaurs.

3. Some scientists believe that 0.66 billion years ago, when the asteroid collided with the Earth, when the dinosaur ecosystem is more fragile period, encountered asteroid collision caused by the environmental changes, dinosaurs in the life of 160 million years towards extinction.