Obviously by its size. Dinosaur in chinese is 恐 ( canto: hung, means fear) 龍 ( canto: long , means dragon ). Hence dragon bones. As someone already said it is probably have to do with superstition
compared to what culture? You cannont say we're always renown where there are probably other cultures that are even more. You know dinosaur bones are the reasons why westerners have the feared fire breathing dragon and easterners have the woshipped and revered dragon(long). People back in the days-_-2
i'm not very sure of the whole process of pressure and fossils over time to get oil; but shouldn't they be saving those bones for their industrial energy consumption?
not just two decades for a while now i read another incident where they were using these "dragon bones" for chinese medicinal herb soups but besides dinosaurs fossils, people also found human bones within the mix, but because they were just fragments of the bones, the people couldn't really tell the difference between one bone and another