2.6" Flying Crotalocephalina Trilobite - Lghaft, Morocco

Flying Crotalocephalina Trilobite - Lghaft, Morocco #301943

This is an impressive, 2.6" long (if outstretched) specimen of Crotalocephalina gibbus from Lghaft, Morocco. Nice preparation and shell detail. It has been prepared in a "flying" pose by removing nearly all of the surrounding limestone. This leaves it floating above the rock on a pedestal. The preparation takes lot of time but the results are quite spectacular. This specimen has less than 1% shell restoration along repaired cracks.

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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