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The Cenozoic is just as much the age of savannas, the age of co-dependent flowering plants and insects, and the age of birds. [40] Grasses also played a very important role in this era, shaping the evolution of the birds and mammals that fed on them. One group that diversified significantly in the Cenozoic as well were the snakes.
Index fossils must have a short vertical range, wide geographic distribution and rapid evolutionary trends. Another term, "zone fossil", is used when the fossil has all the characters stated above except wide geographical distribution; thus, they correlate the surrounding rock to a biozone rather than a specific time period.
During the Cenozoic, Oregon's climate gradually cooled and eventually yielded the environments now found in the state. The era's fossils include marine and terrestrial plants, invertebrates, fish, amphibians, turtles, birds, mammals, and traces such as eggs and animal tracks. Oregon has a long tradition of paleontological research.
Quetzalcoatlus, one of the largest flying animals to ever live, first appears in the fossil record. c. 66.038 ± 0.011 Ma – Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event at the end of the Cretaceous Period marks the end of the Mesozoic era and the age of the dinosaurs; start of the Paleogene Period and the current Cenozoic era.
The Quaternary (/ k w ə ˈ t ɜːr n ə r i, ˈ k w ɒ t ər n ɛr i / kwə-TUR-nə-ree, KWOT-ər-nerr-ee) is the current and most recent of the three periods of the Cenozoic Era in the geologic time scale of the International Commission on Stratigraphy (ICS), as well as the current and most recent of the twelve periods of the Phanerozoic eon. [3]
Cenozoic limestone is common in North Carolina and rich in fossils. The gravel and marl pits of North Carolina are also known for their abundant fossils. Later Cenozoic marine life included the giant shark megalodon. During the later part of the Pleistocene epoch, the sea withdrew from the state, which was then inhabited by mammoths and mastodons.
Connecticut has no Cretaceous rocks in which fossils may have been preserved. This gap in the rock record continues into the Cenozoic era and spans the entire Tertiary period. However, local sedimentation resumed during the Quaternary period as glaciers intruded into the state.
This list of the Cenozoic life of Florida contains the various prehistoric life-forms whose fossilized remains have been reported from within the US state of Florida during the Cenozoic Era, between 66 million and 10,000 years ago.