Exploring lemur-based seed dispersal

Unchecked hunting and environmental degradation in tropical forests, which previous studies have correlated with the reduction of large animals in this biome, may impede the generational renewal of large fruit and seed-producing ...

Fossils reveal prehistoric Patagonian dinosaurs

A study led by The University of Texas at Austin is providing a glimpse into dinosaur and bird diversity in Patagonia during the Late Cretaceous, just before the non-avian dinosaurs went extinct.

Dinosaur teeth reveal what they didn't eat

Scratches on dinosaur teeth could reveal what they really ate. For the first time, dental microwear texture analysis (DMTA) has been used to infer the feeding habits of large theropods, including Allosaurus and T. rex.

Rare new fossil find the 'Rosetta Stone' of marine paleontology

Queensland Museum Network paleontologists have excavated Australia's first head and associated body of a 100-million-year-old long-necked marine reptile in what has been described as the Rosetta Stone of marine reptile paleontology.

page 1 from 35

Cretaceous

The Cretaceous ( /krɪˈteɪʃəs/), derived from the Latin "creta" (chalk), usually abbreviated K for its German translation Kreide (chalk), is a geologic period and system from circa 145.5 ± 4 to 65.5 ± 0.3 million years (Ma) ago. In the geologic timescale, the Cretaceous follows the Jurassic period and is followed by the Paleogene period of the Cenozoic era. It is the youngest period of the Mesozoic era, and at 80 million years long, the longest period of the Phanerozoic Eon. The end of the Cretaceous defines the boundary between the Mesozoic and Cenozoic eras. In many languages this period is known as "chalk period".

The Cretaceous was a period with a relatively warm climate and high eustatic sea level. The oceans and seas were populated with now extinct marine reptiles, ammonites and rudists; and the land by dinosaurs. At the same time, new groups of mammals and birds as well as flowering plants appeared. The Cretaceous ended with one of the largest mass extinctions in Earth history, the K–T extinction, when many species, including non-avian dinosaurs, pterosaurs, and large marine reptiles, disappeared.

This text uses material from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA