Definitions
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun An order of Rhizopoda, belonging to the sub-kingdom Protozoa, furnished with a shell or test, simple or complex, usually perforated by pores (foramina), whence the name.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun plural (Zoöl.) An extensive order of rhizopods which generally have a chambered calcareous shell formed by several united zooids. Many of them have perforated walls, whence the name. Some species are covered with sand. See
rhizophoda .
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun A large group of
amoeboid protists , of the orderForaminifera , that are mostlymarine .
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun foraminifers
Etymologies
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Examples
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This, indeed, is why oil companies employ fossil experts to identify particular strata of rocks, usually by microfossils, tiny creatures called foraminifera, for example, or radiolaria.
THE GREATEST SHOW ON EARTH RICHARD DAWKINS 2009
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Australian researchers recently analyzed shells of modern plankton, called foraminifera, which teem by the billions in the Southern Ocean surrounding Antarctica.
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This, indeed, is why oil companies employ fossil experts to identify particular strata of rocks, usually by microfossils, tiny creatures called foraminifera, for example, or radiolaria.
THE GREATEST SHOW ON EARTH RICHARD DAWKINS 2009
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This beach is famous for its "star-sand," made up of tiny sea animals called foraminifera, which are formed from single-celled protozoa that produce calcium carbonate shells.
Breathtaking Beaches © Corbis Cleopatra's Beach Sedir... 2006
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Oceanographers have now identified no less than nine periods of intense cold over the past 900,000 years, as reflected by the characteristic shells of minute animals known as foraminifera found in cores drawn from the depths of the Pacific Ocean.
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The scientists used cores of ocean sediment containing fossils of microscopic shelled organisms called foraminifera to reconstruct past water temperatures in the strait.
NYT > Home Page By JOHN COLLINS RUDOLF 2011
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Two years later, he met Thomas Rupert Jones, the retired Professor of Geology at the Royal Military College, Sandhurst, who asked Sherborn for help with papers he was writing on microscopic fossils known as foraminifera.
Telegraph.co.uk - Telegraph online, Daily Telegraph and Sunday Telegraph 2011
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The calcium carapace of microscopic animals called foraminifera living in the Southern Ocean, for example, have fallen in weight by a third.
PhysOrg.com - latest science and technology news stories 2010
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The calcium carapace of microscopic animals called foraminifera living in the Southern Ocean, for example, have fallen in weight by a third.
PhysOrg.com - latest science and technology news stories 2010
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Feb 12 (ANI): Evidence from the deepest surveyed point in the world's oceans has suggested that tiny single-celled creatures called foraminifera living at extreme
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