2.95" Flying Crotalocephalina Trilobite - Atchana, Morocco

Flying Crotalocephalina Trilobite - Atchana, Morocco #222318

This is an impressive, 2.95" long (if outstretched) specimen of Crotalocephalina gibbus from Atchana, Morocco. Nice preparation and shell detail. It has been prepared in a "flying" pose by removing nearly all of the surrounding limestone. This leaves it floating above the rock on a pedestal. The preparation takes lot of time but the results are quite spectacular.

There is about 1% restoration along the repaired crack.

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 with over 25k currently described species, filling nearly every evolutionary niche. Due in large part to a hard exoskeleton (shell), they left an excellent fossil record.

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