Alien Looking 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 armatus from the Middle Devonian limestone of Morocco. It has been meticulously prepared so it's distinctive occipital "horns", genal spines and dorsal spine are all 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.

There is only a very tiny bit of restoration under the right eye where a repaired crack runs through the trilobite.

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.