The phrase "a rather ancient" is correct and usable in written English.
It can be used to describe something that is quite old or has been around for a long time, often with a sense of nostalgia or historical significance.
Example: "The artifact discovered in the ruins was a rather ancient piece of pottery, dating back to the early civilization."
Alternatives: "somewhat old" or "fairly ancient".
The future headquarters turned out to be a rather ancient and neglected barn, built by a Dutch settler some two hundred years ago.
Or, a rather ancient variety thereof.Mail scams date back at least to 1888 for chain letters, according to Snopes.com, a site which tries to verify urban myths.
"In the U.S. it's a rather ancient see" — the seat of a bishop's authority — "and the confluence of the native peoples and the missionaries created a rich ground for saints and martyrs".
Coming over the river you see a rather ancient clock face, one of those exteriors that looks like ramshackle shale has been blasted onto the walls, and faux-gothic arches atop the windows.
So the Apple Watch is replacing the need to type words by pushing users to create doodles, signs and symbols — a rather ancient form of communication of course.
A striking potential implication of our results is that AS already existed in the plant-animal ancestor, a rather ancient and "primitive" unicellular eukaryote.
Memorably, the tycoon emptied his pockets of a huge wad of £50 notes, as well as a rather ancient-looking mobile phone.
There were plenty of tourists present while we were there, but unlike the UK, where there would have been health-and-safety protocols everywhere, there was just a rather ancient-looking donation box to which everyone contributed.
If this is true, parthenogens from the same or adjacent areas should form a monophyletic clade of exclusively and rather ancient parthenogenetic lineages.
Note that the ancestral cheC duplication appears rather ancient as shown in a tree containing all archaeal cheC sequences and rooted with a few bacterial homologs (see Additional file 3).
"Roman Forum, Basilica Aemilia" (1910) resembles a giant's backyard strewn with large stone fragments of a rather fancy ancient building.
