For hundreds of years, people
have found dinosaur bones in many different parts of the world. But, until
scientists did tests on them, only a few people knew where these large bones
really came from.
In ancient China, people thought that the dinosaur
bones were dragon bones. In parts of Europe,
people thought that they were bones of giant people and animals. The ancient
Greeks found dinosaur bones when they dug for gold. These dinosaurs had beaks
like birds. The Greeks thought that they must be griffins.
In Vietnam, people
believed that a giant water buffalo carried the sun across the sky each day. They
thought that dinosaur bones were the giant water buffalo’s bones. American
Indians thought that the bones came from giant snakes. They believed that these
snakes dug holes in the ground and died in them.