3.25" Unusual Subasaphus Laticaudatus Trilobite - Russia

Unusual Subasaphus Laticaudatus Trilobite - Russia #127839

This is one of the more rarely seen species of Asaphus from the St. Petersburg region of Russia. It is a 3.25" long Subasaphus laticaudatus. It has a dark, caramel colored shell and it looks like it is ready to crawl off of the rock. The hypostome or mouthplate has been exposed on the underside of the trilobite.

Like nearly all the trilobites available from this area there is some shell restoration where the shell faked during collection or was weathered. It appears to be about 2-3% in total, mainly along cracks in the shell.

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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