Pair of Crotalocephalina Trilobite Fossils - Atchana, Morocco

This is an impressive pair of well preserved Crotalocephalina trilobite fossils collected near Atchana, Morocco. The larger one is 3.2" long and the smaller is 2.7". The rock has been painstakingly removed using air-scribes and air abrasives and then sculpted to create an aesthetic, free-standing display. Total shell restoration is only about 3% on this piece.

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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