Henry Gee

Yes, trilobites are absolutely beautiful.

And I would say that most fossil collectors will have trilobites in their collection.

Trilobites evolved early in the Cambrian period.

Their acme was maybe in the Cambrian or the succeeding Ordovician.

After the Devonian period, they went into a bit of a decline, and they finally petered out during the end Permian mass extinction of the Great Dying.

But with the trilobites, that was really a...

departure in a minor key.

They were, by that time, quite minor components.

But earlier, there were trilobites everywhere.

I mean, some of them are virtually microscopic.

Some of them are a foot or two long.

Some of them had enormous...

eyes, compound eyes like insects do.

Some of them were blind, some of them burrowed, some of them skittered along the surface, and some of them swam.

So there were trilobites for every occasion.

Oh yes, they were a marvellously adaptable form.

I mean, if you can think of a pillbug or a woodlice, the reason they're called trilobites is they were divided into three parts longitudinally, a bit like a church with a nave, the side bits at each side, and at the front they had a very particular head.

But also, like jointed-limbed animals, like insects and crustaceans today, they molted.

So there are even fossils of trilobites molting, or the actual molted skeleton of a trilobite when it grew to become bigger.

And very occasionally, there are trilobite fossils with soft part preservation.