From Longman Dictionary of Contemporary EnglishCretaceousCre‧ta‧ceous /krəˈteɪʃəs/ adjective HEGthe Cretaceous period was the time long ago when rocks containing chalk were formed
Examples from the Corpus
Cretaceous• Many layers of decaying organic matter built up in Pennsylvania during the Cretaceous, and now it is all coal.• Similarly, the huge reptiles which dominated the land, sea, and even the air of the Cretaceous are all gone.• One possible case of paired impacts has been widely discussed in connection with the Cretaceous extinction event.• Anomalous ammonites: the Cretaceous genus Nipponites.• Carboniferous sediments have been affected by low-amplitude Hercynian folding, Mesozoic rift faulting and Cretaceous inversion-related compression and fault re-activation.• Then followed the long afternoon of the dinosaurs, the 71 million years of the Cretaceous period.• He says that dinosaur specimens from late Cretaceous rocks reveal low predator/prey ratios of from 3 to 5 percent.• Their fossils are commonest in Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous rocks.Origin cretaceous (1600-1700) Latin cretaceus, from creta “chalk” 