8.1" Insane, Spiny, Undescribed Scabrella Trilobite - Morocco

Insane, Spiny, Undescribed Scabrella Trilobite - Morocco #259669

This is an incredible giant spiny Scabrella trilobite from Issoumour, Morocco. Despite numerous fake, composited, and heavily restored specimens of this giant, porcupine-like trilobite finding their way onto the market, only a small number complete specimens have ever been found.

This one is real, is NOT a composite and is very well prepared. Total shell restoration is about 3%. Nearly all of the spines are real, with only some of the smaller ones on its head having been restored. The head was repositioned during preparation which is the case with every Scabrella specimen we've seen. They are molts and the heads are typically found in close proximity to the body, often pushed underneath the thorax. We're not aware of any specimens being found that were not molts.

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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