A large underground intrusion of igneous rock that has cooled slowly beneath the earth's surface, similar to a batholith but an older or variant term.
From Greek 'bathos' meaning 'depth' plus 'lithos' meaning 'stone,' literally 'deep stone.' This term and 'batholith' both emerged in geological science in the 19th century.
Batholites are the secret skeletons of mountains—huge bodies of molten rock that cooled underground, and when overlying rock erodes away, they become visible as the granite cores of mountain ranges!
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