The Cretaceous (Cretassic) Period: A Geologic Proposition to the ICS

Look, I’m not saying the International Commission on Stratigraphy is incompetent—just that they clearly got lazy around 145 million years ago. Every other period in the geologic column has its shite together. Cenozoic? All “-ocene” endings: Eocene, Oligocene, Miocene—like a biglove Utah family reunion where everyone’s name ends in the same vowel sound. Paleozoic? “-ian” gang: Cambrian, Ordovician, Silurian, Devonian, Permian—sounds like a medieval council of Scottish/Gaelic wizards arguing over how to pronounce the name John. Even the Mesozoic’s got a rhythm: Triassic, Jurassic—clean, punchy, “-sic” like they’re all skater buddies doing the same tricks.

Then comes Cretaceous.

…Cretaceous!

It’s the geologic equivalent of showing up to a black-tie gala in cargo shorts and flip-flops. No suffix. No flair. Just… “Cretaceous.” Like someone forgot to hit “save” on the naming convention. Like someone just didn’t get the memo. And don’t give me that “it comes from Latin creta, meaning chalk” excuse—chalk’s great, but so is consistency. Why not Chalksic? Or Cretaic? Hell, even Cretacic would’ve been better than this half-baked orphan Cretaceous.

So here’s my proposal: we rename it the Cretassic Period.

Yes, it sounds ridiculous. That’s the point. The whole point. Because the only way to fix a century-old typo is to lean into the absurdity until it becomes normal. Think about it—people already call it “the Cretaceous” like it’s an expensive type of shell fish that most people are allergic to. We just need one super bowl commercial where a velociraptor yells, “This is the Cretassic era, baby!” and suddenly every kid in third grade is spelling it right.

Imagine the posters:

Cretassic: The Age of Dinosaurs (Now With Proper Suffixes)

Tagline: “Because grammar matters—even when the planet’s on fire.”

Plot? Simple. A rogue paleontologist (played by Ryan Reynolds, obviously) discovers that the ISC’s naming board is secretly funded by Big Chalk conglomerates. He teams up with a sassy psychotic girl who things she’s a T. rex (played by Scarlett Johansson) and a time-traveling geologist (Idris Elba, naturally) to storm USGS headquarters and demand retroactive suffix consistency–on threat of some…thing really bad.

Cue slow-mo shot of the whole team getting out of a hummer in front of the USGS national offices as Scarlett Johansson is seen running a filing cabinet on a dolly labeled “Mesozoic Inconsistencies” into the front door window at full speed. All while wearing her inflatable T-res costume and trying to get up off the ground in a pile of broken glass with stubby little arms that look more like fingers and the other two freaking out a little because they thought she was going to use the door, not run through it.

Cut to courtroom scene:

Judge: “So all this because you wanted to add a -sic?” Reynolds, standing in front of a remorseful Scarlet T-rex, still in the bottom half of her costume: “We want consistency dammit! Something our parents never gave us! Just make it make sense!”

The jury—half geologists, half TikTok influencers—deliberates for three seconds before shouting, “Cretassic!”

Post-credits: a montage of every textbook in the world auto-correcting itself.

And yeah, I know what you’re thinking: “But Lance, isn’t this just pedantry?”

Guys, pedantry is how we got “Pleistocene” instead of “Ice Age.” Precision, and hard-to-pronounce words are sexy. Consistency is hot. And if we can’t trust the geologic timeline to rhyme, what’s next—calling the reverting Pennsylvanian and Mississippian to Carboniferous? If there’s anything American scientists are good at… its consistency. If we dare to defy the imperial unit system… we can change the Cretaceous. And if we don’t… who are we? What are we? Why dont we just give up the metric system?

Besides, think of the merch. “Cretassic” mugs. “I Survived the Cretassic Extinction” T-shirts. A whole line of Cretassic-branded chalk—white, dusty, and now grammatically correct. And best of all… the Jurassic Park Trilogy (or are we on #5 now?) called, ‘Cretassic Park: because we needed one that was scientifically accurate‘.

We could even pitch it to Netflix:

Scene 1: The Naming War Scene 2: The Asteroid That Fixed Everything Scene 3: Cretassic vs. the Quaternary—Who Gets the Last Word?

And look—if the ISC still says no? Fine. We’ll just start calling it Cretassic anyway. Like how people say “gif” with a hard G. Or how we all pretend “aluminum” isn’t spelled wrong. Cultural momentum wins.

So yeah. Petition the ISC. Tweet at them. Spam their LinkedIn. Tell them the Cretaceous is a blight on logic, a stain on stratigraphy, and honestly? A little embarrassing.

Because if we’re gonna spend billions studying rocks, we might as well make sure their names don’t sound like someone sneezed halfway through the word.

Cretassic. Say it. Feel it. Own it. And if anyone asks why we did it—tell them it’s for the children. And for the dinosaurs. And for the sake of not looking like idiots in front of aliens.