fragmentary

In the past, new species were often declared on the basis of a few teeth or other fragmentary evidence, says John Hawks, an anthropologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who was not involved in the new research.

Often, paleontologists tasked with reconstructing the fragmentary remains of these animals have been guided in their pursuits by analogies to more familiar objects and circumstances.

Offill’s signature fragmentary style fires on all cylinders in Weather, creating a novel driven less by plot than by mood and atmosphere.

Digging revealed part of a shallow pit, but fragmentary bones visible in the pit were too fragile to remove or study closely.

Staudinger uses these items to engage in wordplay, ponder the role of the artist and pen a fragmentary autobiography.

The Lotus and the Storm turns out to be a grand, haunted melodrama with elements of camp, delivered in fragmentary reveries.

Literature has been in a plundered, fragmentary state for a long time.

Francis Watson argued that all of the fragmentary sentences preserved on the papyrus are also found in the Gospel of Thomas.

The author's statistical claims were based on wild extrapolations from a few fragmentary and unreliable sources.

I took phone calls from the field, with fragmentary updates.

The abbey was founded by William the Lion in 1178, but war, fire and fanaticism have left it sadly fragmentary.

Such advice will not serve as a screen if based on a fragmentary, incomplete statement of facts.

Yes: she remembered now, though it still seemed like a dream—a fragmentary, misty dream.

Such are the fragmentary references that have survived concerning the career of the first Cambridge printer.

While Madame Bastien was speaking David was hastily glancing over the fragmentary writings his hostess had just handed to him.