noun
definition
A rock consisting of spherical grains within a mineral cortex accreted around a nucleus, often of quartz grains.
definition
An ooid or oolith.
Examples of oolites in a Sentence
Deposits of brown iron ore of great economic value occur in many sedimentary rocks, such as the Lias, Oolites and Lower Greensand of various parts of England.
The Jurassic system - comprising, in descending order, the subdivisions of Upper Oolites (Portlandian Kimmeridge Clay), Middle Oolites (coal limestones; Oxford clay), Lower Oolites (Great Oolite series; Inferior Oolite series), Lias (Upper, Middle, Lower) - is well represented on both sides of the Highlands.
The Lower Oolites are made up of sandstones and shales with some limestones, and are overlaid by several hundred feet of an estuarine series of deposits consisting chiefly of thick white sandstones, below and above which lie shales and shelly limestones.
The continuity of the belts of Chalk and of the Middle and Upper Oolites in the Eastern Plain is broken by the shallow depression of the Wash and the Fenland.
Next in order come the Greensands and Gault, which lie at the base of the Chalk escarpment, between that formation and the Oolites.
In the northern portion of the county, the Middle Oolites are the most important, and of these, the Oxford Clay predominates over most of the low ground upon which Bedford is situated.
The Great Ouse, from the point where it enters the county on the west, has carved through the Middle Oolites and exposed the Great Oolite as far as Bedford; their alternating limestones and clays may be seen in the quarries not far from the town.
At Cambridge he obtained fossil shells from the Pleistocene deposit at Barnwell; in the Vale of Wardour he discovered in Purbeck Beds the isopod named by Milne-Edwards Archaeoniscus Brodiei; in Buckinghamshire he described the outliers of Purbeck and Portland Beds; and in the Vale of Gloucester the Lias and Oolites claimed his attention.