(a.) Belonging to the most recent division of geological time, including the tertiary, or Age of mammals, and the Quaternary, or Age of man. [Written also caenozoic, cainozoic, kainozoic.] See Geology.
Example Sentences:
(1) Concentrations of small fossil mammals are frequently encountered in Cenozoic deposits, but the causes for such accumulations have seldom been determined.
(2) This discovery nearly doubles the stratigraphic range of therapsids and furnishes their first record from the Cenozoic.
(3) In general, the small subunit nuclear sequences appear to be best for elucidating Precambrian divergences, the large subunit nuclear sequences for Paleozoic and Mesozoic divergences, and the organellar sequences of both subunits for Cenozoic divergences.
(4) Of the suborders present in the Paleozoic, seven are morphologically relatively simple, slowly evolving, and continued into Mesozoic and Cenozoic times to become the ancestoral lineages from which evolved several additional post-Paleozoic suborders.
(5) Hidden beneath the rolling red landscape is one of the world’s richest fossil deposits from the Cenozoic era, also know as the Age of Mammals.
(6) Smelt and sea raven belong to taxonomic orders believed to have diverged prior to Cenozoic glaciation.
(7) All groups studied show some slowdown in rates of molecular change over Cenozoic time.
(8) The break from constant or increasing rates during the Mesozoic to decreasing rates during the Cenozoic appears to coincide with extraordinary diversification of placental mammals at the beginning of this era.
(9) Cenozoic climatic oscillations leading to increasing seasonality may have been the triggering element in this model, because seasonality creates periods in which the availability of fruit is relatively predictable.
(10) The AFP gene locus may have evolved by gene amplification as recently as 10(6) years ago in response to the onset of the Cenozoic ice age.