Opera singers of the old school (people assumed he had in mind Domingo, Carreras and Pavarotti) were derided as "Jurassic performers", who arrived at rehearsal "with shreds of primeval vegetation hanging from their jaws".
侏羅紀（Jurassic）是一個地質年代，界於三疊紀和白堊紀之間，約2億0100萬年前（誤差值為60萬年）到1億4500萬年前（誤差值為400萬年）。侏羅紀是中生代的第二個紀，開始於三疊紀-侏羅紀滅絕事件。雖然這段時間的岩石標誌非常明顯和清晰，其開始和結束的準確時間卻如同其它古遠的地質時代，無法非常精確地被確定。
侏羅紀前期，因為經歷大滅絕，所以各種動植物都非常稀少（屬於休養生息的階段），但其中恐龍總目一枝獨秀，伺機稱霸陸地。侏羅紀中晚期以後，恐龍成為地球上最繁榮昌盛的優勢物種，此後會統治地球1.5億年，直到白堊紀-第三紀滅絕事件為止。
Jurassic
語源
History of term[edit]
The chronostratigraphic term "Jurassic" is directly linked to the Jura Mountains, a mountain range mainly following the course of the France–Switzerland border. During a tour of the region in 1795,[note 2] Alexander von Humboldt recognized the mainly limestone dominated mountain range of the Jura Mountains as a separate formation that had not been included in the established stratigraphic system defined by Abraham Gottlob Werner, and he named it "Jura-Kalkstein" ('Jura limestone') in 1799.[note 3][7][8][9]
Thirty years later, in 1829, the French naturalist Alexandre Brongniart published a survey on the different terrains that constitute the crust of the Earth. In this book, Brongniart referred to the terrains of the Jura Mountains as terrains jurassiques, thus coining and publishing the term for the first time.[10]
中文名稱源自舊時日本人使用日語漢字音讀的音譯名「侏羅紀」（音讀：ジュラキ，羅馬字：juraki）。
