4.35" Spiny Drotops Armatus Trilobite - Excellent Preparation

Spiny Drotops Armatus Trilobite - Excellent Preparation #181850

This is a 4.35" long, spiny Drotops armatus trilobite collected from the Bou Dib Formation near Mrakib, Morocco. With somewhere around 100 free standing spines it would have been a very unappetizing dinner for it's predators. It's a nice looking specimen. Most of the spines were removed and reattached during preparation which is frequently done with these spiny trilobites but only a few have been restored. There is some restoration of scratches and dings on the shell, left from preparation, but no major restoration.

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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