Two Nice Proetid Trilobites (One Ventral) - Jorf, Morocco

This is a pair of nicely prepared proetid trilobites from Jorf, Morocco. One specimen is upside down and has been prepared ventrally. The larger of the two specimens is .7" long which is about average size for this small proetid. A really cool piece.

There are probably dozens of very similar looking proetid trilobites from this area of Morocco. I keep going back and forth on what genus I think this might be, and would probably take an expert on Proetid trilobites to say for sure.

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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