zombie taxon
zombie taxon noun: a taxon that falsely appears to persist until, or reappear at, a time in the fossil record later than the taxon's actual point of extinction, due to fossils of organisms belonging to the taxon having been eroded from their original strata and redeposited in the source sediments for younger strata.
Noun
zombie taxon (plural zombie taxa)
- A taxon that falsely appears to persist until, or reappear at, a time in the fossil record later than the taxon's actual point of extinction, due to fossils of organisms belonging to the taxon having been eroded from their original strata and redeposited in the source sediments for younger strata.
Forms of zombie taxon
| plural | zombie taxa |
|---|
Origin of zombie taxon
Referring to the fossil having been mobile, or "walking", long after the death of the original organism.
Questions about zombie taxon
- What does zombie taxon mean?
- Zombie taxon means a taxon that falsely appears to persist until, or reappear at, a time in the fossil record later than the taxon's actual point of extinction, due to fossils of organisms belonging to the taxon having been eroded from their original strata and redeposited in the source sediments for younger strata.
- What part of speech is zombie taxon?
- Zombie taxon is a noun.
- What is the plural of zombie taxon?
- The plural of zombie taxon is zombie taxa.
Words near zombie taxon in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: zombie taxon (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
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Cite this entry: “zombie taxon.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/zombie_taxon. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.