cretaceous

«cretaceous» in Mova's school dictionary: the last period of the age of dinosaurs, from about 145… — its meaning for a pupil, its sense in the lessons and examples.

part of speech

adjective (cretaceous; Cretaceous with a capital as a name)

meaning for a pupil

1) (science) The Cretaceous is the last period of the age of dinosaurs, from about 145 to 66 million years ago. tree →

2) (science) Cretaceous (small c) means made of chalk or like chalk. tree →

sense in the lessons

In science lessons about dinosaurs and fossils: Tyrannosaurus rex and Triceratops lived in the Cretaceous; it ended when a huge asteroid hit the Earth and most dinosaurs died out. The period is named after chalk (Latin «creta»), because chalk rocks like the White Cliffs of Dover formed then. Phrases: «the Cretaceous period», «Late Cretaceous».

examples

• Tyrannosaurus rex lived in the Late Cretaceous period. tree →
• The Cretaceous ended about 66 million years ago. tree →
• An asteroid strike at the end of the Cretaceous wiped out most dinosaurs. tree →
• The White Cliffs of Dover are made of Cretaceous chalk. tree →
• The first flowering plants spread during the Cretaceous. tree →
• We found a Cretaceous fossil shell on the beach. tree →

note

Pronounced «krih-TAY-shus». Order of dinosaur periods: Triassic, Jurassic, Cretaceous. Myth: dinosaurs did not all live at the same time — T. rex lived closer in time to us than to Stegosaurus (a Jurassic dinosaur).

Trees and pragmatics

Every meaning and example of «cretaceous» parsed by Mova, each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.