6" Enrolled Spiny Drotops Armatus Trilobite - Very Colorful

Enrolled Spiny Drotops Armatus Trilobite - Very Colorful #192504

This is a colorful, super-spiny, enrolled Drotops armatus trilobite which would be about 6" long if outstretched. It comes from the Bou Dib Formation near Mrakib, Morocco. It has been exportly prepared to remove the hard, surrounding limestone and leave it perched on a pedistal of rock. There is about 4-5% restoration on this specimen. Most of the spines are original though there many have been reattached during preparation and only a handful look fully 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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