Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)/Cenozoic

CENOZOIC, a geological term applied to the latest of the three divisions into which strata have been arranged, with reference to the age of the fossils they include. The Cenozoic system embraces the tertiary and post-tertiary systems of British geologists, exhibiting recent forms of life, in contra-distinction to the Mesozoic, exhibiting intermediate, and the Palaeozoic, ancient and extinct, forms. It corresponds nearly with what has been called the age of mammals.