FOSSILIZED

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

IPA (US):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does fossilized mean? 

• FOSSILIZED (adjective)
  The adjective FOSSILIZED has 1 sense:

1. set in a rigidly conventional pattern of behavior, habits, or beliefs

  Familiarity information: FOSSILIZED used as an adjective is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• FOSSILIZED (adjective)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Set in a rigidly conventional pattern of behavior, habits, or beliefs

Synonyms:

fossilised; fossilized; ossified

Context example:

an ossified bureaucratic system

Similar:

inflexible (incapable of change)

 Context examples 

"It's not the absence of oxygen that allows them to be preserved and fossilized. It's the presence of oxygen under the right circumstances."

(Fossils may need air to form, National Science Foundation)

The earliest evidence for life on Earth is of fossilized bacteria that are between 3.5 and 3.8 billion years old - a time when the solar system was being bombarded by meteorites.

(Life Could Exist on Moon 4 Billion Years Ago, The Titi Tudorancea Bulletin)

During their primordial migration out of Africa, ancestors of present-day humans are thought to have interbred with Neanderthals, whose brain characteristics can be inferred from their fossilized skulls.

(“Residual echo” of ancient humans in scans may hold clues to mental disorders, National Institutes of Health)

The single fossilized bone fragment, about two centimetres (less than an inch) long, which researchers said was from a girl at least 13 years old, was found in 2012 in the Denisova Cave in Siberia.

(Fossil genome shows hybrid of two extinct species of human, Wikinews)

In other studies, apart from the possible contamination of samples with archaea from adjacent lands, these mineral particles may have been interpreted as fossilized cells, when in reality they form spontaneously in the brines even though there is no life.

(Place discovered on earth with no microbial life, The Titi Tudorancea Bulletin)

A team of researchers from China, Canada, the United States, and Australia published on Wednesday their discovery of an early fossilized baby snake, reportedly the oldest ever found, in a piece of amber in the middle of a sandstone deposit in Myanmar.

(Cretaceous baby snake fossil found in Myanmar, Wikinews)