Flying Reedops Trilobite with Crotalocephalina - Atchana, Morocco

This is a spectacularly prepared, 2.4" long Reedops trilobite that has had nearly all of the rock removed from around it. It's naturally associated with a slightly larger Crotalocephalina. This piece was collected from the Lhandar Formation near Atchana, Morocco and many, many hours of preparation work under high magnification went into turning it into a natural, work of art. Total restoration on this piece is only about 2% in total.

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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