Did George Washington Know About Dinosaurs? 🦖 Short answer: nope.

Dinosaurs feel like common knowledge today, but they’re a surprisingly modern discovery. The U.S. Founding Fathers lived—and mostly died—without ever knowing these ancient giants existed.

In 1677, English naturalist Robert Plot described what we now recognize as the first documented dinosaur fossil: a femur from Megalosaurus. With no concept of dinosaurs, he guessed it belonged to an extinct race of giant humans. That idea stuck around for a while.

George Washington died in 1799, decades before scientists realized these bones came from ancient reptiles. The word “dinosaur”—Greek for “terrible lizard”—wasn’t coined until 1842 by paleontologist Richard Owen. By then, even Charles Carroll, the last surviving signer of the Declaration of Independence, had already passed away.

Dinosaurs ruled Earth for millions of years. Humanity’s awareness of them? That’s barely a blip in history.

Fun Timeline Twist: The T. rex lived closer to modern humans than it did to Stegosaurus. • Stegosaurus: ~155–145 million years ago • T. rex: ~68–66 million years ago • Humans: now

Earth is about 4.54 billion years old. Dinosaurs dominated for roughly 165 million years. Recorded human history? A blink.

Ancient world. Very recent discovery.