BELEMNITE • DICCIONARIO INGLES.COM • Definition of Belemnite

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Belemnite

noun

A conical calcareous fossil tapering to a point at one end and with a conical cavity at the other end containing (when unbroken) a small chambered phragmocone from the shell of any of numerous extinct cephalopods of the family Belemnitidae.

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Etymology of 'Belemnite'

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"Belemnite" Quotes from Famous Books

... there is nothing in nature at all like the chambered shell of the Belemnite, except the shells of the Nautilus and of the Spirula, it was legitimate to prophesy that the animal from which the fossil proceeded must have belonged to the group of the Cephalopoda. Nautilus and Spirula ...

— On the Method of Zadig - Essay #1 from "Science and Hebrew Tradition" • Thomas Henry Huxley

... said truly that the Ammonite, Orthoceras, and Nautilus of these ancient rocks were of the tetrabranchiate division, and none of them so highly organised as the Belemnite and other dibranchiate cephalopods which afterwards appeared, and some of which now flourish in our seas. Therefore, we may infer that the simplest forms of the Cephalopoda took precedence of the more complex in time. But if we ...

— The Antiquity of Man • Charles Lyell

... boldly discards the protecting and confining shell, or spreads over the outside of it, and becomes a "shell-fish" with the shell inside. The octopus of our own time has advanced still further, and become the most powerful of the invertebrates. The Belemnite, as the Mesozoic cuttle-fish is called, attained so large a size that the internal bone, or pen (the part generally preserved), is sometimes two feet in length. The ink-bags of the Belemnite also are sometimes preserved, and ...

— The Story of Evolution • Joseph McCabe

Words linked to "Belemnite" : belemnitic, fossil, Belemnitidae, family Belemnitidae