1.65" Upper Cambrain Trilobite (Pterocephalia) - British Columbia

Upper Cambrain Trilobite (Pterocephalia) - British Columbia #212625

This is a 1.65" long, Upper Cambrian trilobite (Pterocephalia norfordi) trilobite from the McKay Group of British Columbia. Pterocephalia is a fairly uncommon species from the formation.

It is preserved on top of a calcite nodule, a type of preservation only seen at a few localities in the world. While trilobites from this locality used to be fairly plentiful on the market new laws surrounding the exportation of fossils from British Columbia, mean no new material is coming out of the province.

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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