vermiconic
English
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Adjective
editvermiconic
- (malacology, of a shell or fossil) Having a shell which is highly asymmetrical in three dimensions, with segments curving at irregular angles like a wriggling worm (see image).
- 2013 November 21, Neil H. Landman, Kazushige Tanabe, Richard Arnold Davis, Ammonoid Paleobiology, Springer Science & Business Media, →ISBN, page 677:
- ( […] 'vermiconic heteromorphs) were vertical migrants in deep water, including the oceans, where some fed on mesopelagic organisms including sluggish juvenile ammonites, and others caught zooplankton in tentacles modified into umbrella-nets […]
- 2019 October 15, George R. McGhee, Jr., Convergent Evolution on Earth: Lessons for the Search for Extraterrestrial Life, MIT Press, →ISBN, page 149:
- Another three-dimensional heteromorphic growth form—the vermiconic—is highly asymmetrical, resembling a shell that started out torticonic, then uncoiled in a series of irregular loops and bends. The vermiconic ammonoids were drifters, and the torticonic ammonoids were mobile plankton […]