From 63 million to 135 million years ago

Usage examples of cretaceous.

Oviraptor, a therapod relative of the Cretaceous Tyrannosaurus rex and the Jurassic predator Allosaurus, but about the size of a small ostrich.

The most spectacular of Cretaceous mollusks were the ammonites, chambered cephalopods related to the modern pearly nautilus and, more distantly, to squid and octopus.

At or near the end of the Cretaceous the ammonites, like the ancient dinosaurs, became extinct.

By the end of the Cretaceous, modern plants such as magnolias, buttonwood trees, and the rose family decorated the landscape.

The Cretaceous beds have not yet been separated from the overlying Eocene, and the identification of the system rests on the discovery of a single Cenomanian ammonite.

After the encounter with the whale it continued its descent toward the thick Cretaceous forests, only a fraction of its kinetic energy expended.

The trees of the mighty Cretaceous forests were consumed like pine needles.

His numerous articles, essays and reviews include research on the systematics, anatomy, and evolution of early mammals and other vertebrates, studies of the Cretaceous and Paleogene vertebrate faunas, and analyses of patterns of origination and extinction.

All we need do is look at the profound loss of species that occurs as we fragment and destroy habitats now in order to have some sense of what occurred at the end of the Cretaceous in North America, and prehaps on a global scale.

The Cretaceous system, from the infra-Cretaceous Hauterivien to the Senonian, appears throughout the whole extent of Northern Bulgaria, from the summits of the Balkans to the Danube.

I would have advantaged little O-aa nothing to have known that this creature that was intent on reaching up and dragging her down into the sea was Tylosaurus, one of the rulers of the Cretaceous seas of the outer crust, eons ago.

Cretaceous, birds like the curlew might have been able to go on eating shoreline animals while the dominant enantiornithine birds died along with the dinosaurs.

When finished they found that they had more than tripled the global total of dinosaur fossils from the late Cretaceous.

In these tall Cretaceous skies, fueled by the oxygen-rich air, a pyramid of predators had erected itself, with all the savagery of its landbound analogues.

Named for the rows of uniform cusps on their teeth, the multituberculates lived past the end of the Cretaceous before becoming extinct after 150 million years of existence.