Cretaceous - Wikipedia It is the third and final period of the Mesozoic Era, as well as the longest At around 77 1 million years, it is the ninth and longest geological period of the entire Phanerozoic The name is derived from the Latin creta, ' chalk ', which is abundant in deposits from the latter half of the period
Cretaceous Period | Definition, Climate, Dinosaurs, Map - Britannica Cretaceous Period, in geologic time, the last of the three periods of the Mesozoic Era It began 145 million years ago and ended 66 million years ago and featured the extinction of the dinosaurs at the end of the period
The Cretaceous Period: What was Earth like before dinosaurs went . . . The Cretaceous Period lasted for nearly 80 million years Discover what the climate was like in this geological period, where the continents were and what animals and plants lived on them Find out how an asteroid ended the age of dinosaurs
Cretaceous Period—145. 0 to 66. 0 MYA (U. S. National Park Service) In 1882 a Belgian geologist, Omalius d’Halloy, proposed the term “Cretaceous” for strata encircling the Paris Basin in France The term derives from the Latin word for chalk (“creta”) and describes thick deposits of calcium carbonate (CaCO 3) ooze and chert (SiO 2)
Cretaceous - New World Encyclopedia The Cretaceous period is one of the major divisions of the geologic timescale, reaching from the end of the Jurassic period, from about 146 to 136 million years ago (Ma) to the beginning of the Paleocene epoch of the Paleogene period, or Tertiary sub-era (about 65 5 to 64 Ma)
Cretaceous Period | Geology | Research Starters - EBSCO The Cretaceous period, along with being remembered for the dinosauars that roamed it, is remembered for its catastrophic and dramatic ending that killed off these giant animals Remnants of that long-ago time have survived through the intervening 66 million years since the end of the Cretaceous
The Cretaceous Period The Cretaceous is usually noted for being the last portion of the "Age of Dinosaurs", but that does not mean that new kinds of dinosaurs did not appear then It is during the Cretaceous that the first ceratopsian and pachycepalosaurid dinosaurs appeared
Cretaceous Period Facts and Information | National Geographic During this period, oceans formed as land shifted and broke out of one big supercontinent into smaller ones Continents were on the move in the Cretaceous, busy remodeling the shape and tone of
Cretaceous Period | AMNH Many of the most famous dinosaurs, such as Tyrannosaurus and Triceratops, first appeared in the Cretaceous (kruh-TAY-shus) Period, which lasted from 144 to 65 million years ago