2.8" Nice Spiny Comura Trilobite - Ofaten, Morocco

Nice Spiny Comura Trilobite - Ofaten, Morocco #213450

This is a 2.8" long Comura bultyncki trilobite from Ofaten, Morocco. Preparing a trilobite such as this requires 60+ hours under microscope. It has dozens of free-standing spines and you can even see tiny eye facets in both eyes. This is a very nicely prepared example with only about 1-2% restoration along repaired cracks.

Trilobites were a very diverse group of extinct marine arthropods. They first appeared in the fossil record in the Early Cambrian (521 million years ago) and went extinct during the Permian mass extinction (250 million years ago). They were one of the most successful of the early animals on our planet: over 25,000 species have been described, filling nearly every evolutionary niche. Due in large part to their hard exoskeletons (shells), they left an excellent fossil record.