4.8" Spiny Drotops Armatus Trilobite - Colorful Shell

Spiny Drotops Armatus Trilobite - Colorful Shell #192502

This is a colorful, 4.8" long, super spiny Drotops armatus trilobite from the Bou Dib Formation of Morocco. Nearly 100 spines along its thorax would have made it unappetizing prey from the predators of the Devonian. It's been nicely prepared with excellent eye facet detail. There is a quartz seam running diagonally through the rock and the trilobite, and there is a partial ventral specimen also present on the 9.8 x 5" piece of limestone. Restoration is only about 3% which only a handful of spines having been restored.

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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