Page 38 - The Dinosaur Book and Other Wonders of the Prehistoric World (DK-Smithsonian)

Trilobites

Paradoxides was one of the Phacops had a pair
earliest and biggest trilobites, of compound eyes,
growing to 15 in (37 cm) long. each made up of
many small lenses.

Paradoxides
Curled

The armored body Phacops
curled up into a ball to
protect its soft underside
from attack.
Drotops

The long spines would
have made this a prickly
mouthful for a predator.

Ceratalges

Trilobites, with their segmented bodies, are extinction that ended the Paleozoic Era
among the most distinctive fossils found in 252 million years ago. Trilobites were some of
ancient rocks. The earliest trilobites appear the earliest arthropods—animals with external
in rocks that are more than 520 million years skeletons and jointed legs, like today’s insects
old. They thrived in the oceans for an amazing and spiders. Many trilobites like Drotops looked
36 270 million years until the catastrophic mass like flattened pillbugs, with several pairs of legs

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