Definitions
from The Century Dictionary.
- A division of reticulate amœbiform protozoans, whose test is many-chambered or polythalamian: opposed to Monothalamia. The name is less exactly used as a synonym of Foraminifera.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun plural (Zoöl.) A division of Foraminifera including those having a manychambered shell.
Etymologies
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Examples
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What is more remarkable, M. Ehrenberg has ascertained that at least fifty-seven species of the microscopic animals of the chalk, being infusoria and calcareous-shelled polythalamia, are still found living in various parts of the earth.
Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation Robert Chambers 1836
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Species of sea mollusks, of reptiles, and of mammifers, have been changed again and again, since the cretaceous era; and it is not till a long subsequent age that we find the first traces of any other of even the humblest species which now exist; but here have these humble infusoria and polythalamia kept their place on earth through all its revolutions since that time, -- are we to say, safe in their very humility, which might adapt them to a greater variety of circumstances than most other animals, or are we required to look for some other explanation of the phenomenon?
Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation Robert Chambers 1836
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