TERTIARY

Tertiary

Tertiary is an officially deprecated but still widely used term for a geologic period from 65 million to 1.806 million years ago, a time span that lies between the superseded Secondary period and the Quaternary. The Tertiary is no longer recognized as a formal unit by the International Commission on Stratigraphy, its traditional span being divided between the Paleogene and Neogene Periods and the first stage of the Pleistocene of the Cenozoic Era.

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tertiary

Noun

  1. A tertiary feather.
  2. A member of a Roman Catholic third order - the Franciscans, Dominicans and Carmelites among others.

Adjective

  1. Of third rank or order; subsequent.
  2. Possessing some quality in the third degree; having been subjected to the substitution of three atoms or radicals.
    a tertiary alcohol, amine, or salt
  3. Growing on the innermost joint of a bird's wing; tertial.


The above text is a snippet from Wiktionary: tertiary
and as such is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

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