1.25" Spiny Ceratarges Trilobite

Now this is one alien looking trilobite, it's almost hard to imagine that it was once alive inhabiting our oceans. It's a Ceratarges from the Middle Devonian limestone of Morocco. It has been meticulously prepared so it's distinctive occipital "horns" are free-standing. One can imagine that the large spines may have served as defensive protection against fish that had just begun to develop hardened jaws and likely had trilobites on the dinner menu.

This specimen is fairly small at 1.25" long. There is some very minor restoration near the base of the horns where they were broken and had to be reattached.

There are currently about 5 different species of Certarges described from Morocco each a slight variation on the others. A paper describing some of these species can be found here. I wasn't confident enough in the my identification to label this one down to the species level.