Well this is a question I am looking to answer at the moment in my area of research (but for a different era). There was recently a great bibliographic essay published by Will Tattersdill who plots out some of the research that has been done in this area and I would recommend it for further reading. The term dinosaur was not used until 1842 when first penned by Richard Owen. Before that dinosaurs had been referred to by a variety of names like lizard or beast and it wasn’t until at least 1900 that the term ‘dinosaur’ was used more widely by the public. For the next several decades people were aware of dinosaurs but they did not permeate our culture as they do now.

In the 1970s, shortly after John Ostrom discovered Deinonychis, the dinosaur became more visible and part of popular culture. This was partly due to the uniqueness of this dinosaur and the ways it was described as an intelligent and agile hunter. David Sepkoski also argues that during this time paleontology was being transformed into paleobiology which offered a more dynamic view of dinosaurs as creatures rather than just static osteological records. From that point on the dinosaur has been part of our cultural lexicon, and this peaked in the 1990s with the release of the film, Jurassic Park in 1993. Since the release of Jurassic Park dinosaurs have had a significant place in our culture: from children’s books, to TV, and beyond.

Some might also note that the television show The Flintstones began its run prior to Ostrom’s discovery. However, the Flintstones was a cultural commentary on the changes in modern life as a result of changes in technology than a focus on the dinosaur. Dinosaurs are used in The Flintstones much like a dog or as machinery. They are not creatures of their own accord- merely placeholders for modern technology that seemed to ‘fit’ (inaccurately of course) with the ‘era’ the producers at Hanna Barbara were attempting to create.

Sources: O'Connor, R. (2012). Victorian Saurians: The linguistic prehistory of the modern dinosaur. Journal of Victorian Culture, 17(4), 492–504.

Tattersdill W. Work on the Victorian dinosaur: Histories and prehistories of 19th century palaeontology. Literature Compass. 2017;14:e12394.

Sepkoski, D. (2012). Rereading the fossil record: The growth of paleobiology as an evolutionary discipline. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.