Nicely Prepared Ceratarges with Headless Phacops

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 from the Middle Devonian limestone of Morocco. 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.

The preparation on this specimen is excellent with great surface detail and free-standing spines. The preparation also exposes the hypostome or mouth plate underneath its head.

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. This one appears to be Ceratarges koumalii