1910–1911
Britannica 11th
Encyclopaedia Britannica · 11th edition
EOCENE (Gr. ftis, dawn, KCUPO?, recent), in geology, the name suggested by Sir C. Lyell in 1833 for the lower subdivision of the rocks of the Tertiary Era. The term was intended to convey the idea that this was the period which saw the dawn of the recent or existing forms of life, because it was estimated that among the fossils of this period only 3! % of the species are still living. Since Lyell's time much has been learned about the fauna and flora of the period, and many palaeontologists doubt if any of the Eoce…
- Source status
- OCR text aligned to scanned pages
- Pages
- Vol. 9, pp. 661-664