Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • adjective Containing fossils.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Bearing or containing fossils: as, fossiliferous rocks.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • adjective (Paleon.) Containing or composed of fossils.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • adjective Containing fossils.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • adjective bearing or containing fossils

Etymologies

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Examples

  • Natural History, asserts or confesses that often have objects of material such as fossiliferous limestone and slag been sent to him He says that these things have been accompanied by assurances that they have been seen to fall on lawns, on roads, in front of houses.

    The Book of the Damned Charles Fort

  • Not only may any kind of fossiliferous rocks occur next to the Archæan, but even the "youngest" may be so metamorphosed and crystalline as to resemble exactly in this respect the so-called "oldest" rocks.

    Q. E. D., or New Light on the Doctrine of Creation George McCready Price

  • "fossiliferous," or shell limestone, and have drawn the erroneous inference that the animal matter once contained in those shells originated petroleum; but no fish oil ever contained paraffin.

    Scientific American Supplement, No. 829, November 21, 1891 Various

  • In addition to the flakes we uncovered two dozen fire-scorched rocks, a biface knife, a broken piece of fossiliferous chert that had been heated.

    Bird Cloud Annie Proulx 2011

  • In addition to the flakes we uncovered two dozen fire-scorched rocks, a biface knife, a broken piece of fossiliferous chert that had been heated.

    Bird Cloud Annie Proulx 2011

  • In addition to the flakes we uncovered two dozen fire-scorched rocks, a biface knife, a broken piece of fossiliferous chert that had been heated.

    Bird Cloud Annie Proulx 2011

  • In addition to the flakes we uncovered two dozen fire-scorched rocks, a biface knife, a broken piece of fossiliferous chert that had been heated.

    Bird Cloud Annie Proulx 2011

  • You can't, for instance, use oxygen isotope ratios from fossiliferous limestone as a paleo-temperature proxy if the limestone has been heated too much.

    Making Light: Scholarly works to avoid citing at all costs 2010

  • In a letter to James Hall he suggested that the Panamanian fossils, if identical to specimens he had collected thirty years earlier in southern Chile, might indicate continuous fossiliferous formation extending throughout South America.

    James Eights 2009

  • Given McCain's fossiliferous nature, the claim just might be true.

    Lieberman To Break Vow Not To Attack Obama Tonight 2009

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  • Having already described him in most of his present habitatory and anatomical peculiarities, it now remains to magnify him in an archaeological, fossiliferous, and antediluvian point of view.

    - Melville, Moby-Dick, ch. 104

    July 31, 2008