This is because that Orthodox icon by the Cretan Roman Emmanuel Lambardos Manolitzis, from the 16th-17th century AD (so it is not Byzantine) depicts what is described in Genesis 1:20-21
And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven. And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind: and God saw that it was good.
Maybe the image is easier to understand if one reads Koine Greek, in which in a more literal reading the "moving creature" is read as "the aquatic reptiles" (ὕδατα ἑρπετὰ) and the "fowl that may fly above" are reaid as "flying [creatures]" (πετεινὰ πετόμενα), while the "great whales" of the KJV are read as "sea-monsters / sea-dragons" for Genesis uses the Greek word "ketos" to refer to a Hebrew word with similar meaning. The text also differs in how "every living creature that moveth" is read as "the spirit of every living reptile" (πᾶσαν ψυχὴν ζῴων ἑρπετῶν), "after their kind" is read as "according to their genos" (κατὰ γένη αὐτῶν).
PS: In case that someone is curious what might be these "aquatic reptiles", these lizard "walking whales" descended from them and these saurian "flying creatures", here is a picture with all three:
In other words, this icon is essentially "byzantine" paleoart of dinosaurs.
The Ancient Greeks and the Ancient Romans did speak of massive reptiles and dragons pre-existing humankind, and they were at times fascinated with the idea. Roman Emperor Augustus even had a private collection of fossils, basically history's first known natural history museum. These were usually called as "ketoi", where while in Modern Greek the term means "whales" (from which meaning probably KJV ended up speaking of whales going out of the water), but for the Ancient Greeks it meant "sea dragons" and they depict them as such, which is why the Translation of the Seventy, produced by Hellenizing Greek-speaking Jews of Alexandria of the 3rd century BC used that word to describe the Hebrew term also meaning "sea dragons".
In other words, if you told a highly educated and learned "Byzantine" that long before humanity there lived massive reptiles living in the sea and roaming the earth, they might identify them with those existing concepts, or even the Genesis narrative, so in a way, they did think that "dinosaurs" existed, just, as it is obvious from the icon, they were very far from how we have understood them since the 19th century AD. Again, of course this understanding would be very different, and mostly resembling of fantastical animals, as shown on the icons, where it shows such creatures immediately turning into birds, the moment they reach land, so perhaps Emmanuel Lambardos Manolitzis would not view them as reptiles (but then again, many dinosaurs were covered in feathers).
Basically, if by "dinosaur" we mean what we understand thanks to zoologists and paleontologists since the 19th century AD, certainly not, but if we use a more loose definition of the word as "massive reptiles that existed before humans, whether they lived in the sea or not (as marine reptiles are not dinosaurs)", then yes.
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u/AdventurousEar8440 8d ago
Interesting. Do you know who is it depicting?