![]() Their soft undersides were preserved only very rarely so we initially had no idea what their legs looked like. Trilobites went through numerous moults as they grew, just as crustaceans and insects do today, and thus were “ veritable fossil factories” (p. ![]() The fossils we find are frequently only (fragments of) cast-off shells. Their segmented forms are instantly recognisable, but look closer and you will see a “ mixture of strangeness and familiarity The trilobites are lodged in this betwixt and between category, familiar as arthropods, yet strange in all their particularities” (p. Looking through their eyes (which is something you can literally do), there are numerous fascinating facets to their story, and Fortey expertly reveals some of these here. As a group, trilobites were tremendously successful, surviving for almost 270 million years from the early Cambrian (521 million years ago) to their extinction at the end of the Permian (252 million years ago), spanning nearly all of the Palaeozoic era. ![]() ![]() Trilobite! Eyewitness to Evolution, written by Richard Fortey, published by Flamingo (a HarperCollins imprint) in March 2001 (paperback, 269 pages)įortey’s first encounter with a trilobite fossil at the age of 14 led to a life-long career as a palaeontologist and trilobite specialist at the London Natural History Museum, from which he retired in 2006. ![]()
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