5.4" Ordovician Ampyxina Trilobite Mortality Plate - Missouri

Ordovician Ampyxina Trilobite Mortality Plate - Missouri #135528

This is a mortality plate containing ten Ordovician trilobites of the species Ampyxina bellatula. These trilobites were collected from the Maquoketa Formation of Pike County, Missouri. All of the trilobites feature prone (dorsal) presentation and the largest trilobite is .44" long.

There is a repaired crack through the rock and a smaller repaired crack through a trilobite where a chip of the rock broke free. It comes with an acrylic display stand.

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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