Definitions

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  • proper noun A taxonomic subclass within the class Actinopodea — the radiolaria, numerous species, most of them extinct, of minute zooplankton, many with distinctive mineral skeletons useful for dating stratigraphic layers.

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Examples

  • Schleicher addresses himself, previously took occasion, in his splendid monograph on the 'Radiolaria', * to express his high appreciation of, and general concordance with, Mr. Darwin's views.

    Lectures and Essays Thomas Henry Huxley 1860

  • I know of no more solid and important contributions to biology in the past seven years than Haeckel's work on the "Radiolaria," and the researches of his distinguished colleague Gegenbaur, in vertebrate anatomy; while in

    Darwiniana : Essays — Volume 02 Thomas Henry Huxley 1860

  • Beneath tropical seas, in depths of 1000 to 1500 fathoms, calcareous oozes cover nearly a third of the ocean floor; while the colder waters of the temperate and polar regions release to the underlying bottom the siliceous remains of diatoms and Radiolaria.

    Undersea (historical) Rachel Louise Carson 2007

  • These silicious bodies belong partly to the lowly vegetable organisms which are called Diatomaceae, and partly to the minute, and extremely simple, animals, termed Radiolaria.

    Autobiography and Selected Essays 2003

  • But if the Radiolaria and Diatoms are thus rained upon the bottom of the sea, from the superficial layer of its waters in which they pass their lives, it is obviously possible that the

    Autobiography and Selected Essays 2003

  • The skeletons of the full-grown, deep - sea Globigerinae are so remarkably solid and heavy in proportion to their surface as to seem little fitted for floating; and, as a matter of fact, they are not to be found along with the Diatoms and Radiolaria, in the uppermost stratum of the open ocean.

    Autobiography and Selected Essays 2003

  • Foraminifera, the siliceous beds are made of Radiolaria, sponge spicules and diatoms, while the red clay closely resembles the red clay of the deepest parts of the oceans.

    Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 "Banks" to "Bassoon" Various

  • Radiolaria, which peopled in inconceivable multitudes the tertiary oceans; and, as they died, their minute skeletons fell down in a continuous rain upon the ocean bed, and became cemented into solid rock which geologic action has brought to the surface in Barbados and many other parts of the earth.

    Scientific American Supplement, No. 470, January 3, 1885 Various

  • Take away the cysts which characterize the Radiolaria, and a dead Sphaerozoum would very nearly represent one of this deep-sea “Urschleim,” which must, I think, be regarded as a new form of those simple animated beings which have recently been so well described by

    Thomas Henry Huxley Huxley, Leonard, 1860-1933 1920

  • Radiolaria, those magical creatures of the sea, which are so small that they can be seen only with a powerful microscope, but which look like living snow-crystals, although a thousand times more beautiful.

    The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries Francis Rolt-Wheeler 1918

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