Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- adjective Of, relating to, or being the period of geologic time from about 443 to 416 millions years ago, the third period of the Paleozoic Era. The Silurian Period is characterized by the development of jawed fishes, early invertebrate land animals, and land plants.
- noun The Silurian Period.
from The Century Dictionary.
- Of or belonging to the Silures, a people of ancient Britain, or their country.
- In geology, of or pertaining to the Silurian. See II.
- noun A name given by Murchison, in 1835, to a series of rocks the order of succession of which was first worked out by him in that part of England and Wales which was formerly inhabited by the Silures.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun The Silurian age.
- adjective (Geol.) Of or pertaining to the country of the ancient Silures; -- a term applied to the earliest of the Paleozoic eras, and also to the strata of the era, because most plainly developed in that country.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- adjective geology Of a
geologic period within thePaleozoic era ; comprises theLlandovery ,Wenlock ,Ludlow andPridoli epochs from about 439 to 409 million years ago. - adjective archaeology Of or related to the Silures, a pre-Roman British tribe.
- proper noun geology The Silurian period.
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun from 425 million to 405 million years ago; first air-breathing animals
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
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Examples
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The term Silurian was employed by Barrande, after Murchison, in a more comprehensive sense than was justified by subsequent knowledge.
Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 "Banks" to "Bassoon" Various
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They're also in a fairway for a deeper zone called the Silurian, where a number of other companies have had huge success.
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Confining our attention to the large vertebrate classes, the testimony of the rocks proves, as we have said, that fishes appeared first in what are called the Silurian and Devonian epochs, where they developed into a rich and varied array of types unequaled in modern times.
The Doctrine of Evolution Its Basis and Its Scope Henry Edward Crampton
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I find that if we take merely one portion of the detritus washed from its surface and laid down in the seaviz. that which is comprised in what is termed the Silurian systemand if we assume that it spreads over 60,000 square miles of Britain with an average thickness of 16,000 feet, or 3 miles, which is probably under the truth, then we obtain the enormous mass of 180,000 cubic miles.
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You have in that first stage what the geologists call the Silurian Age, the age of fishes, when the great divine manifestation was of all these forms of life.
Avatâras Four lectures delivered at the twenty-fourth anniversary meeting of the Theosophical Society at Adyar, Madras, December, 1899 Annie Wood Besant 1890
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The Silurian was the great age of trilobites; the Devonian, the age of fishes; Mesozoic times swarm with the gigantic reptiles; and in Tertiary times the mammals are dominant.
Time and Change John Burroughs 1879
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In the so-called Silurian system we have a vast assemblage of strata of various kinds, together many thousands of feet thick, and abounding in remains of animal life.
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On the Cambrian rocks rest the formations known as Silurian, from the fact that they were first thoroughly examined in South Wales
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She is a total bitch to everybody, and explains that she is a warrior class Silurian, which is the lizard race that used to own earth before we got it.
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There is no alteration in this except that "Silurian" has become
Luck or Cunning? Samuel Butler 1868
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