1.8" Harpes (Scotoharpes) Trilobite - Boudib, Morocco

Here is a Harpes (Scotoharpes) trilobite from Boudib, Morocco on the NE side of Jebel Issoumour. It has a very dramatic "head shield" which is often interpreted as a mechanism to help it stay on top of a soft ocean floor. This preglabellar ring (head shield) is covered in many sensory pits which may have held hairlike features when the trilobite was alive.

About half of the thorax has been exposed but the tail and the rest likely curls underneath the surface of the limestone. There is only some minor restoration along repaired cracks.

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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DETAILS
SPECIES
Harpes (Scotoharpes) aff. perradiatus
LOCATION
Boudib, Morocco
FORMATION
El Otfal Formation
SIZE
1.8" long on 4.3x3.9" limestone
SUB CATEGORY
ITEM
#86891
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