3.2" Spectacular Dicranurus Trilobite With Zlichovaspis

Spectacular Dicranurus Trilobite With Zlichovaspis #227805

This is bizarre trilobite looks like something you might see in an Aliens movie. It's fittingly named Dicranurus monstrosus. While fakes of this trilobite abound, real examples like this one are fairly rare, and ones of this quality don't come around very often.

This is a spectacularly prepared example of Dicranurus monstrosus naturally associated with a Zlichovaspis rugosa trilobite. Both of the trilobites have been prepared so that they appear to fly above the rock on a pillar of limestone. The Dicranurus is above average size for the species at 3.2" wide and only has about 2% shell restoration along repaired cracks. An amazing piece.

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.

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