Description

Late Devonian
Wuppertal, Germany
Very nice 5.6mm on 34mm x 14mm matrix.

Trilobite. Arthropod.

Trimerocephalus is a genus of eyeless trilobite of the Family Phacopidae.  It is known from many sites in Europe, central Asia, north Africa, and Australia.  It lived at the very end of the Devonian and died out during the mass extinction at the end of the period. This one is an odd trilobite from an oddball site.

Trilobites had their heyday in the Cambrian but suffered greatly from the mass extinction at the end that period.  They would rebound in the Ordovician but decline in diversity due to a mass extinction at the end of that period.  The trilobites rebounded less vigorously in the Silurian continuing into the Devonian but the end-Devonian mass extinctions nearly wiped them out completely.