Rokfaith (CC BY-SA 3.0) via Wikimedia Commons The name Cretaceous comes from the Latin 'creta' which means chalk. It's named for the large quantities of chalk rock laid down at this time in Western ...

The pile of 66-million-year-old, fossilized, regurgitated sea lilies was dated to the Cretaceous era ... and the organisms’ structures included chalk-like portions that were often regurgitated ...

A selection of fossilized micrometeorites recovered from Cretaceous chalk. These particles were initially composed of Fe-Ni metal but during atmospheric entry they oxidized to form Fe-oxide minerals.

During the mid-Cretaceous, ocean anoxia and climate instability led to selective extinctions among marine top predators, particularly large and fast groups like ichthyosaurs and pliosaurids.