small shellies

English

Noun

small shellies pl (plural only)

1. (paleontology) Small shelly fauna.
   • 2009, Joseph Seckbach, Divine Action and Natural Selection, page 486:

     Following this is the earliest Cambrian, where large shelly invertebrates are rare (and no trilobites occur), but the commonest fossils are tiny forms nicknamed the “small shellies.”

   • 2018, Mark Carnall, “Unidentifiable fossils: palaeontological problematica”, in The Guardian‎:

     Although difficult to interpret, small shellies may hold the key to understanding the origins of shelled and biomineralised groups of animals.