Cainozoic

Cainozoic, from the Greek kainos, recent, and zoe, life, a term applied by John Phillips to the Tertiary series of rocks, or "strata above the Chalk" of earlier writers, as corresponding with Palaeozoic (formerly Primary) and Mesozoic, or Secondary, and alluding to the fact that the fossils, especially the mollusks, in these rocks either belong to existing species, or have at least a modern facies. The prevalence of fruit-bearing plants (angiosperms) and of carnivorous gastropods (whelks, etc.), the appearance of hoofed mammals, followed by other orders, and the disappearance of the ammonites, belemnites, ichthyosaurs, plesiosaurs, dinosaurs, and pterosaurs, characteristic of the Mesozoic, are among the chief features of the life of the Cainozoic period.