Metacanthina Trilobite With Micro-Fossils - Top Quality Specimen

This is a very special specimen from the Lhandar Formation of Morocco. It is a Metacanthina issoumourensis trilobite centered on a rock covered in micro-fossils including gastropods, corals and brachiopods. In addition to the fantastic preparation on the trilobite, the micro-fossils have been individually exposed using air abrasives under microscope. This process took dozens of hours of work. Rock entire piece of limestone is 6.2 x 4.9" and the trilobite in the center is about 2.2" long.

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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