4.9" Colorful Trilobite (Pedinopariops) - Spectacular Specimen

Colorful Trilobite (Pedinopariops) - Spectacular Specimen #212380

This is a spectacular specimen of the phacopid trilobite Pedinopariops vagabundus. It comes from the Bou Dib Formation and at 4.9" long it is extremely large for the species. It is laid out almost entirely prone on a good sized chunk of limestone and has a colorful preservation. There is a quartz seam funning through it which only adds to the character of the piece. There is only about 2% shell restoration, primarily on the right hand side of it's head.

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.

More About Trilobites