Two Metacanthina Trilobites - Lghaft, Morocco

This is an aesthetically prepared pair of Metacanthina issoumourensis from the Lhandar Formation near Lghaft, Morocco. They have been painstakingly prepared to remove the surrounding limestone and have excellent shell and eye facet preservation. There is no restoration on this piece.

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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