foraminifer

noun

Etymology: Borrowed from French foraminifère (“foraminifer, foraminifera”), from French Foraminifères, coined by the French naturalist Alcide d’Orbigny (1802–1857) in an 1826 article. By surface analysis, Latin forāmen (“apertures, holes”, stem foramin-) + -fer (“bearing”).

1. Any of a large group of aquatic amoeboid protists of the subphylum Foraminifera, characterized by streaming granular ectoplasm that among other things is used for catching food, often with a calcareous shell with many holes through which pseudopodia protrude.

   “The species of foraminifer which composes, almost to the exclusion of all others, the deep Atlantic mud, is called Globigerina. […] The natural home of the foraminifers appears to be in the deeper parts of the ocean, commencing where the regular inhabitants of limited depths terminate.”

   “The Heterostegina-bed at Malta is not without smaller Foraminifers (some of which we can identify,—as the Globigerina bulloides, Truncatulina lobatula, &c.), but the matrix is too stubborn to yield all its treasures.”