Isnt Bind supposed to use .zone files ?

[Alltimed]

I was setting up Bind on my Redhat machine and I could have sworn the last time I set it up the zones used the file extension .zone, my current zones are using .hosts. I am running Bind 9, even my test server is doing that. Is there something I need to change? Or just go back to Bind 8? I am also getting nameserver errors from dnsstuff.

Thanks in advance.