Alien Looking Dicranurus Monstrosus Trilobite

This is a very nice example of one of the most bizarre and collectable trilobites in the world Dicranurus monstrosus. Complete specimens of this species are quite rare. The specimen has extremely nice preparation and is nearly 3 inches wide from genal spine tip to genal spine tip.

Due in large part to it's collect-ability Dicranurus is one of the most faked trilobites on the market. You can find dozens of fakes on ebay, fossil shows and on other retail sites. This specimen is REAL. There's less than 2% restoration, a small section of the left genal spine that was damaged when the rock was broken during collection and some small shell touchups on other spines where the repaired cracks are. One of the things you can look for to see the quality of preparation of a specimen of Dicranurus is the presence of the pair of small nodes on the axial rings. These are very thin shelled and are often abraded off in lower quality specimens.

This species is very similar to the Dicranurus elegans found in the Devonian deposits of Oklahoma. In fact during the Devonian, what is now Oklahoma and Morocco were very close to each other.