.85" Isoteloides Flexus Trilobite - Fillmore Formation, Utah

Isoteloides Flexus Trilobite - Fillmore Formation, Utah #226174

Here is a new offering from a lease we just recently acquired in Utah. While Cambrian trilobites are well known from Utah, several formations also contain a very diverse fauna of Ordovician trilobites, they are just rarely collected.

This is a beautiful, .85" long asaphid trilobite (Isoteloides flexus) from the Lower Ordovician, Fillmore Formation in Utah.
It has great shell preservation and both cheeks are tightly attached.

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.