Jurassic

Borrowed from French Jurassique, named for the discovery and type location in the Jura Mountains of Switzerland.

• enPR: jo͝o-răs'ĭk, IPA^(key): /d͡ʒʊˈɹæs.ɪk/

• Audio (US):

  (file)

• Rhymes: -æsɪk

Jurassic (not comparable)

1. (geology) Of or pertaining to the second period of the Mesozoic era, a time still dominated by dinosaurs.
   • 1990, Michael Crichton, Jurassic Park, Alfred A. Knopf, page 94:

     His father squinted at the skeleton. “What is it, Jurassic?” “Jeez. No. Cretaceous.” “Cretaceous? What's the difference between Cretaceous and Jurassic?” “Only about a hundred million years,” Tim said. “Cretaceous is older?” “No, Dad, Jurassic is older.”

2. Of or pertaining to the people or region near the Jura Mountain Range of Europe.
   • 1910, Peter Kropotkin, “Anarchism”, in Encyclopædia Britannica:

     The Jurassic, the Spanish and the Italian federations and sections of the International Working Men's Association, as also the French, the German and the American anarchist groups, were for the next years the chief centres of anarchist thought and propaganda.

3. (informal) Very old-fashioned and outdated.
   • 2009 March, Byron Rempel, “Women's Ski Jumping Takes Aim at the Winter Olympics”, in Skiing Heritage Journal, volume 21, number 1, page 17:

     Those fears and excuses seem positively Jurassic more than eighty years later.

   • 2017, Dean Koontz, The Silent Corner, page 93:

     For every three shops or restaurants that looked as if they might have had a poster of Che Guevara somewhere on the premises, there was one stubborn Jurassic retailer offering knit suits for older women or an Italian restaurant that offered all-you-can-eat garlic bread and didn't call itself a trattoria.

   • 2017, Giuliana Prada, Hiding Boys in Bathrooms: A Decade of Dating Debacles:

     Well, thirty compared to twenty-five seemed Jurassic to me back then.

Jurassic

1. (geology, paleontology) The period from 201.3±0.2 to 145 million years ago, after the Triassic and before the Cretaceous; the geologic systems of this period.
   • D. M. Kermack, K. A. Kermack, The Evolution of Mammalian Characters:

     Like the Forest Marble Beds in the Middle Jurassic, the Purbeck Beds of the Upper Jurassic are deltaic or estuarine in origin, so as well as mammals they contain small, presumably freshwater, crocodiles and the first indisputable lizards.

     This is less surprising if it is recalled that in the Upper Jurassic, Europe and North America were joined to form Laurasia and the Atlantic Ocean still had to be formed

• (geological period): Phanerozoic - eon; Mesozoic - era

• (geological period): Lower Jurassic, Middle Jurassic, Upper Jurassic - epochs; series

• (geological period): Triassic (preceding), Cretaceous (succeeding) - periods; systems

• Jurassic on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

• Appendix:Geologic timescale