Definition of "nummulite" []

• A large, coin-shaped, fossil foraminifer of the genus Nummulites, widely distributed in limestone formations from the Eocene Epoch to the Miocene Epoch of the Cenozoic. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "The nummulite rock, in the vicinity of those monuments, frequently presents a conglomerate of testacea imbedded in it, which, in some positions, resemble small seeds; and Strabo imagines they were the petrified residue of the lentils brought there by the workmen, from their having been the ordinary food of the laboring classes, and of all the lower orders of Egyptians."
• "Here and there, at Carmel and Gerizim, patches of the tertiary nummulite of"
• "This limestone wave was shown to be one of a great series, running parallel with the Alps, and constituting an undulatory district, chiefly composed of chalk beds, separated from the higher limestone district of the Jura and Lias by a long trench or moat, filled with members of the tertiary series -- chiefly nummulite limestones and flysch."