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 …

Jan 10, 2026 · 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 …

Apr 27, 2023 · 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 …

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 …

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 …

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...

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 …

Jul 26, 2022 · The Cretaceous period lasted approximately 79 million years, and ended with a major extinction event about 66 million years ago.

Jul 26, 2025 · The Early Cretaceous period, spanning from approximately 145 to 100.5 million years ago, was a dynamic epoch of profound global transformations in Earth’s geological and biological …

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.