phytolith

[ fahyt-l-ith ]

noun

1. a microscopic silica body that forms in a living plant and becomes fossilized.

Example Sentences

A scanning electron microscope view of a phytolith in food residue "That's quite a new idea for hunter-gatherer archaeology in Europe," she told BBC News.

From BBC

The tooth wear and phytolith evidence makes clear that was foraging for C3 plants, but might it have also pursued animals that specialized in C3 plants?

From Scientific American

“Among all the pieces of information that I managed to gather so far with my lab work, the most important is probably the presence of phytolith floors” composed of microscopic plant remains, he said.

From New York Times

Dolores Piperno, a phytolith expert at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., thinks that the team's claim is sound.

From Science Magazine