SWEET Ontology 2.3 Fossils are the preserved remains or traces of animals, plants, and other organisms from the remote past. Fossils vary in size from microscopic, such as single bacterial cells [2] only one micrometer in diameter, to gigantic (macroscopic), such as dinosaurs and trees many meters long and weighing many tons. [Wikipedia] A heterogeneous or conglomerate is a rock consisting of individual stones that have become cemented together. Conglomerates are sedimentary rocks consisting of rounded fragments and are thus differentiated from breccias, which consist of angular clasts.[1] Both conglomerates and breccias are characterized by clasts larger than sand (>2 mm). [Wikipedia] Macrofossils are preserved organic remains large enough to be visible without a microscope. [Wikipedia] A mélange is a large scale breccia, a mappable body of rock characterized by a lack of continuous bedding and the inclusion of fragments of rock of all sizes, contained in a fine-grained deformed matrix. The mélange typically consists of a jumble of large blocks of varied lithologies of altered oceanic crustal material and blocks of continental slope sediments in a sheared mudstone matrix. Some larger blocks of rock may be as much as 1 km across. [Wikipedia] One of the major groups of rock that makes up the crust of the Earth; consists of pre-existing rock mass in which new minerals or textures are formed at higher temperatures and greater pressures than those present on the Earth's surface [wicktionary] Meteoric substances are rocks that have composition significantly different from earth rocks. Meteorites have traditionally been divided into three broad categories: stony meteorites are rocks, mainly composed of silicate minerals; iron meteorites are largely composed of metallic iron-nickel; and, stony-iron meteorites contain large amounts of both metallic and rocky material. [Wikipedia] Fossils which are of microscopic size such as bacteria. [Wikipedia] Molasse refers to the sandstones, shales and conglomerates formed as terrestrial or shallow marine deposits in front of rising mountain chains deposited in a foreland basin, especially on top of flysch, for example that left from the rising Alps, or erosion in the Himalaya. These deposits are typically the non-marine alluvial and fluvial sediments of lowlands, as compared to deep-water flysch sediments. Sedimentation stops once the orogeny stops, or once the mountains have eroded flat. [Wikipedia] Regolith (Greek: "blanket rock") is a layer of loose, heterogeneous material covering solid rock (bedrock). It includes dust, soil, broken rock, and other related materials [Wikipedia] Rock is a naturally occurring solid aggregate of minerals and/or mineraloids. In general rocks are of three types, namely, igneous, sedimentary, and metamorphic. [Wikipedia] One of the major groups of rock that makes up the crust of the Earth; formed by the deposition of either the weathered remains of other rocks, the results of biological activity, or precipitation from solution [wicktionary] 2.3 SWEET Ontology 2.3