The story
- Ancient Greek · derived fromμείων“less”
- English todayMiocene
From Ancient Greek μείων (meíōn, “less”) + καινός (kainós, “new”). Coined by English polymath William Whewell in 1831 for Charles Lyell, who introduced it in 1833 in his book Principles of Geology. By surface analysis, meio- + -cene.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.