Trilobite fossils

:shock: Wow...

I've only ever found very small ones and I had enough trouble scraping away the fairly soft stone they were in, without worrying about spikes and antennae and probosci and such... amazing.

:notworth:
 
TTF, as I'm sure you know the professionals often use weak acid to burn these things clear of the matrix to preserve the detail. I'm utterly jealous of you though, I've never found a trilobite in my life! None of the rocks around me are old enough; I'd need to go to Wales or Scotland. A pity....
got any photos you could show us? :notworth:

Um.....more triliesmilies? Well, I'll see what I can do, though I'm not really up to doing all nine orders.

:bugout:
 
Miniature sandblasters are the prefered means of preparation for trilobites like that. They use baking soda or other fine powder that is softer than the fossil, but harder than the matrix. Funny how fossils like those only started showing up after the invention of the airbrasive unit, your dentist probably uses one on your cavities instead of a drill nowdays.

:trilobit:
 
Amazing Ordovician trilobite preservation images are available here from Beechers Trilobite Bed near New York. Antennae and legs visible, click to enlarge. It's incredible to think these are around 450 million years old or so.
 
Thanks Melissa! Very interesting stuff.

From the files.....here are a couple of pictures of Fuxianhuia protensa which is most likely culprit of this trilobite predation according to the article. This fossil arthropod is from the Chinese Chenjiang fauna at the mind-bogglingly early date of about 525 million years ago.

This animal has been variously interpreted as a very primitive ancestor of the insect branch of the arthropods (urinamia), though other workers have interpreted it as belonging to the spider family (chelicerate/arachnomorph). It had a semicircular head shield, roughly 35 pairs of legs under the body segments all with branching gills, and a long tail spine.

Arthropods such as this one were quite a diverse bunch in the later Cambrian, and it was only with the extinction of many of these forms at the end of the period that the nautiloids exploded onto the world in the early Ordovician to occupy the vacant ecological niches and assume the role of top predator.....

Fuxianhuia, cool animal.

Fuxianhuia.jpg


Fuxianhuia1.jpg
 

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