"But why did they call it a thunder beast?" Bud wanted to know.
"There doesn't seem much sense in that," admitted the scientist, "until you stop to think that paleontologists adopted the word 'thunder' as meaning something large and monstrous, as thunder is the loudest noise in the world."
"Not so bad, after all," was Dick's admission.
"I'm glad to hear you say so," commented the professor. "To go a bit farther, take the word Dinosaur."
"I know the last end of it means a big lizard," put in Bud.
"Yes, and the front of it—the prefix dino, means the same thing that bronto signifies—something large, terrible and fear-inspiring. Dino is a form of word taken from the Greek, deinos meaning terrible and mighty, from its root deos, which means fear.
"So those who first discovered these great bones, having reconstructed the animals whose skeletons they formed, gave them scientific names best fitted to describe them. Can you think of anything more aptly descriptive than 'thunder-lizard,' to indicate a beast shaped like the lizards we see to-day, and yet whose size would terrify ancient man as thunder terrified him?"
The boys were really enjoying this scientific information, dry and complicated as it must seem in the way I have written it down here. But the professor had a way of making the most dry and scientific subject seem interesting.
"What gets me, though," said Dick, "is how they know about how these big lizards and other things look when they only find a single bone, or maybe one or two."
"That is puzzling at first," admitted Professor Wright. "Perhaps I can illustrate it for you. Take, for instance, the Dinornis—and before we go any farther let me see if you can give me a good English name for the creature. Try it now—the Dinornis."