3.9" Flying Crotalocephalina Trilobite - Atchana, Morocco

Flying Crotalocephalina Trilobite - Atchana, Morocco #222312

This is a 3.9" long (if outstretched) trilobite of the species Crotalocephalina gibbus, quarried from the Lhandar Formation near Atchana, Morocco. It is nicely inflated and has been prepared from the surrounding limestone so that it looks like it is ready to crawl off of the rock. The pleural spines have been prepped free from the rock with "flying" presentation.

There is approximately 2-3% restoration to this specimen, primarily on the left hand side of it's head.

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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