The Princeton Field Guide to Dinosaurs

Dinosaur remains have been found by humans for millennia and probably helped form the basis for belief in mythical beasts including dragons. A few dinosaur bones were illustrated in old European publications without their true nature being realized. In the West the claim in the Genesis creation story that the planet and all life were formed just two thousand years before the pyramids were built hindered the scientific study of fossils. At the beginning of the 1800s the numerous three-toed trackways found in New England were attributed to big birds. By the early 1800s the growing geological evidence that Earth’s history was much more complex and extended back into deep time began to free researchers to consider the possibility that longextinct and exotic animals once walked the globe.