Palæont. [f. mod.L. belemnītes (formerly used in Eng.), f. Gr. βέλεμν-ον a dart + -ITE (cf. AMMONITE): so named in allusion to the popular notions mentioned below.]
a. A fossil common in rocks of the Secondary formation; a straight, smooth, cylindrical object, a few inches long, convexly tapering to a sharp point, formerly known, from its shape and supposed origin, as thunder-bolt, thunder-stone, elf-bolt, but now recognized as the internal bone of an animal allied to the cuttle-fish. b. The extinct animal to which this belonged.
1646. Sir T. Browne, Pseud. Ep., 53. The figures are regular in many other stones, as in the Belemnites.
1677. Plot, Oxfordsh., 41. Meeting by the way with a bed of Belemnites, or (as they call them) Thunder-bolts.
1698. T. Molyneux, in Nat. Hist. Irel. (1726), 160. One plain homogeneous body, without any mixture of Cochlite, Belemnite,… or such like extraneous matter.
1833. Lyell, Princ. Geol., III. 325. The belemnite, one of the cephalopodes not found in any tertiary formation.
