''Oolithes'' is an

oogenus Egg fossils are the fossilized remains of eggs laid by ancient animals. As evidence of the physiological processes of an animal, egg fossils are considered a type of trace fossil. Under rare circumstances a fossil egg may preserve the remains of ...

with uncertain affinities. It has historical significance because it was the earliest named oogenus. James Buckman described the first named species as ''Oolithes bathonicae'' in a communication to the 4 May 1859 meeting of the

Geological Society The Geological Society of London, known commonly as the Geological Society, is a learned society based in the United Kingdom. It is the oldest national geological society in the world and the largest in Europe with more than 12,000 Fellows. Fe ...

(published in 1860). Buckman believed that ''Oolithes'' represented the eggs of a

teleosaur Teleosauridae is a family of extinct typically marine crocodylomorphs similar to the modern gharial that lived during the Jurassic period. Teleosaurids were thalattosuchians closely related to the fully aquatic metriorhynchoids, but were less a ...

ian

reptile Reptiles, as most commonly defined are the animals in the class Reptilia ( ), a paraphyletic grouping comprising all sauropsids except birds. Living reptiles comprise turtles, crocodilians, squamates ( lizards and snakes) and rhynchocephalia ...

. Since Buckman's description of ''O. bathonicae'', two other oospecies have been named: ''O. nanhsiungensis'' and ''O. spheroides'', both of which were native to the

Maastrichtian The Maastrichtian () is, in the ICS geologic timescale, the latest age (uppermost stage) of the Late Cretaceous Epoch or Upper Cretaceous Series, the Cretaceous Period or System, and of the Mesozoic Era or Erathem. It spanned the inte ...

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's List of countries and dependencies by population, most populous country, with a Population of China, population exceeding 1.4 billion, slig ...

.Paleobiology Database
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References

Egg fossils Bathonian life Maastrichtian life Cretaceous China Fossils of China Cretaceous England Jurassic England Fossils of England Fossil parataxa described in 1860 {{eggshell-stub