Crossword clues for carboniferous
carboniferous
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Carboniferous \Car`bon*if"er*ous\ (k[aum]r`b[o^]n*[i^]f"[~e]r*[u^]s), a. [Carbon + -ferous.] Producing or containing carbon or coal.
Carboniferous age (Geol.), the age immediately following the Devonian, or Age of fishes, and characterized by the vegetation which formed the coal beds. This age embraces three periods, the Subcarboniferous, the Carboniferous, and Permian. See Age of acrogens, under Acrogen.
Carboniferous formation (Geol.), the series of rocks (including sandstones, shales, limestones, and conglomerates, with beds of coal) which make up the strata of the Carboniferous age or Carboniferous period. See the Diagram under Geology.
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
1830 with reference the geological period, from a word formed in English in 1799 to mean "coal-bearing," from Latin carbo (genitive carbonis) "coal" (see carbon) + -ferous "producing, containing, bearing," from ferre "to bear" (see infer). The great coal beds of Europe were laid down during this period. As a stand-alone noun (short for Carboniferous Period) from 1940s.
Wiktionary
a. Containing or producing carbon
WordNet
adj. of or relating to the Carboniferous geologic era; "carboniferous rock system"
relating to or consisting of or yielding carbon [syn: carbonaceous, carbonous, carbonic]
n. from 345 million to 280 million years ago [syn: Carboniferous period]
Wikipedia
The Carboniferous is a geologic period and system that extends from the end of the Devonian Period, at 358.9 ± 0.4 million years ago, to the beginning of the Permian Period, at 298.9 ± 0.15 Mya. The name Carboniferous means "coal-bearing" and derives from the Latin words carbō (" coal") and ferō ("I bear, I carry"), and was coined by geologists William Conybeare and William Phillips in 1822. Based on a study of the British rock succession, it was the first of the modern 'system' names to be employed, and reflects the fact that many coal beds were formed globally during this time. The Carboniferous is often treated in North America as two geological periods, the earlier Mississippian and the later Pennsylvanian.
Terrestrial life was well established by the Carboniferous period. Amphibians were the dominant land vertebrates, of which one branch would eventually evolve into reptiles, the first fully terrestrial vertebrates. Arthropods were also very common, and many (such as Meganeura) were much larger than those of today. Vast swaths of forest covered the land, which would eventually be laid down and become the coal beds characteristic of the Carboniferous system. The atmospheric content of oxygen also reached their highest levels in geological history during the period, 35% compared with 21% today. This increased the atmospheric density by a third over today’s value. A major marine and terrestrial extinction event occurred in the middle of the period, caused by a change in climate. The later half of the period experienced glaciations, low sea level, and mountain building as the continents collided to form Pangaea.
Carboniferous is a studio album from the Italian band Zu. It was the group's first album for Ipecac records.
Usage examples of "carboniferous".
I need give only one instance, namely, the manner in which the fossils of the Devonian system, when this system was first discovered, were at once recognised by palaeontologists as intermediate in character between those of the overlying carboniferous, and underlying Silurian system.
To interpret rocks, there needs to be some means of correlation, a basis on which you can tell that those carboniferous rocks from Devon are younger than these Cambrian rocks from Wales.
Was it the steaming jungle of the Carboniferous, the bleak shoreline over which the first amphibians must crawl to conquer the land-or, earlier still, the long loneliness before the coming of life?
Somewhere in the steaming jungles of the Carboniferous Period there emerged an organism that for the first time in the history of the world had more information in its brains than in its genes.
Earth is covered in the great carboniferous forests whose residues give us all our coal, and the first winged insects are evident.
The long-ago seas of the Carboniferous and Devonian swarmed with tiny plankton that wrapped themselves inside tiny protective shells.
Created from the lush vegetation and animal fats of the Carboniferous and adjoining periods, holding in itself the black essence of all life that had ever been, constituting in fact a great deep-digged black graveyard of the ultimate eldritch past with blackest ghosts, oil had waited for hundreds of millions of years, dreaming its black dreams, sluggishly pulsing beneath Earth's stony skin, quivering in lightless pools roofed with marsh gas and in top-filled rocky tanks and coursing through myriad channels and through spongy rocky bone, until a being evolved on the surface with whom it could realize and expend itself.
Lyell and Dawson found carboniferous beds 1400 feet thick in Nova Scotia, with ancient root-bearing strata, one above the other, at no less than sixty-eight different levels.
This, as it belongs to the Upper Devonian or Lower Carboniferous, determines a lower limit for the age of the sandstone formation.
There were the sallow lower chalk, the coffee−coloured Hastings beds, the lighter Ashburnham beds, the dark carboniferous clays, and then, gleaming in the electric light, band after band of jet−black, sparkling coal alternating with the rings of clay.
No oil left, no coal left - if Mars ever had a Carboniferous Age - and no water-power - just the driblets of energy they can get from the sun.
But put him back in the Carboniferous Age and he wouldn't think any better than a dinosaur.
But put him back in the Carboniferous Age and he wouldnt think any better than a dinosaur.
Thus conversing we followed the intricate trail toward the temple, which we came upon in a small clearing surrounded by enormous trees similar to those which must have flourished upon the outer crust during the carboniferous age.
When carbon dioxide concentration goes up as a result of volcanic action, the planet heats up a bit and you have a carboniferous age with oceans high and land surface at a minimum.