Biol. [f. Gr. κόκκο-ς grain + λίθος stone.] The name given (by Prof. Huxley) to minute round or oval disk-like organic bodies found in deep-sea dredging, and also fossilized in chalk. Now generally believed to be of algal nature.
1868. Huxley, Lay Serm. (1870), 206. The chalk, like the soundings, contains these mysterious coccoliths and coccospheres.
1875. J. W. Dawson, Dawn of Life, iv. 69. The Coccoliths appear to be grains of calcareous matter formed in minute plants adapted to a deep-sea habitat.
1878. Huxley, Physiogr., xvi. 267. There are innumerable multitudes of very minute saucer-shaped disks, termed coccoliths, which are frequently met with associated together into spheroidal aggregations, the coccospheres of Wallich.
