Ending after an asteroid collided with Earth 66 million years ago, the Cretaceous, which gets its name from the latin for chalk (creta), was the last period of the Mesozoic era and spanned some 80 million years. A time characterised by a warm climate and subsequent high sea levels from which only a few islands protruded, many shallow inland seas covered the planet and led to marine deposits containing fossilised shell fish, coral and ammonites. On land, dinosaurs, including the famous struthiosaurius austriacus found in a coal mine in 1855 near Vienna, continued to dominate.
