In 1838, Owen was commissioned by the British Association for the Advancement of Science to study the fossils of large, terrestrial reptiles that had been recently found. Initially, he believed they were huge lizards, but further study and new specimens -- particularly the fused sacral vertebrae that were distinctly different from other lizards -- convinced him that he was looking at a previously unidentified type of reptile. He proposed a new group for these reptiles and named it Dinosauria (from the Greek "deinos" meaning fearfully great, and "sauros" meaning lizard). 

Owen proposed this new group in an article published in the "Proceedings of the British Association for the Advancement of Science" in 1842.. In that article, Owen wrote: 

"The combination of such characters, some, as it were, from groups now distinct from each other, and all manifested by creatures far surpassing in size the largest of existing reptiles, will, it is presumed, be deemed sufficient ground for establishing a distinct tribe or suborder of Saurian Reptiles, for which I would propose the name of Dinosauria." 

Owen initially grouped the three vanished genera - Iguanodon, Megalosaurus and Hylaeosaurus -- in the Dinosauria suborder.  On that day the "dinosaur," you might say, was named and officially discovered. That moment out of the recent past defined these creatures out of the distant past. 

Spanish paleontologist and dinosaur enthusiast Jose Luis Sanz analyzes the sociocultural phenomenon of dinosaurs -- creatures from the remote past that fascinate humans.

Sanz's book looks at the cultural influence of dinosaurs on scientists, educators and the mass media.

"Dinosaurs are firmly rooted in popular culture," he explains. "They constitute one of the clearest areas of interaction between scientific information and the public's thirst for knowledge -- in this instance, knowledge concerning life in the past."

Sanz follows the history of dinosaur discoveries and shows how this information has been translated into mythologies that often have little resemblance to the sources of their inspiration.