Eocene
pronunciation
How to pronounce Eocene in British English:
UK [ˈi:əusi:n]
How to pronounce Eocene in American English:
US [ˈiəˌsin]
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- Noun:
- from 58 million to 40 million years ago; presence of modern mammals
Word Origin
- Eocene (adj.)
- in reference to the second epoch of the Tertiary Period, 1831, from eo- "earliest" + Latinized form of Greek kainos "new" (see recent). Coined in English (along with Miocene and Pliocene) by the Rev. William Whewell (1794-1866), English polymath, and meant as "the dawn of the recent." As a noun from 1851.
Example
- 1. And third , there is geological evidence for plant extinctions in the eocene .
- 2. Whichever way you look at the eocene enigma , it is bad news for life on earth .
- 3. At 95 % complete , the fossil provides the most complete understanding of the paleobiology of any eocene primate so far discovered .
- 4. The specimen was excavated by private collectors in 1983 from the messel shale pit , a shale quarry near darmstadt , germany , that has yielded many fossils of eocene life , including other primitive primates .
- 5. Fossil plants from the eocene and oligocene epochs indicate that what 's now the qinghai-tibet plateau enjoyed a tropical-subtropical rainforest environment with growing areas of temperate flora in some mountainous areas .