Extinct arthropod

Usage examples of trilobite.

By now the time-levels of the geological strata have been reliably mapped, and we can see that the period of trilobite dominance lasted an immensely long time -- so long that we are not really able to comprehend it.

But it was in the trilobite tribe that the concept was refined to a remarkable degree.

And he goes on to show us how the fossil evidence, hundreds of millions of years old, of these strange trilobite eyes that were stony even before they fossilized, gives us clues into the workings of their nervous systems and even into their varying ways of life in the oceans of remotest antiquity.

That one chapter on trilobite eyes is a work of magic, of fantasy, even -- and yet it is science in its purest form.

Tom and I have the north bedroom, which could really be called two rooms because of the little L-shaped anteroom off the end where Tom keeps his precious trilobite collection in a locked glass case.

Tom, like his father before him, has a family practice in Orangetown, a quick ten minutes away, but he spends at least a third of his time working on trilobite research, his hobby, his avocation, he would tell you in a kind of winking way so that you understand trilobites are his real work.

I went into Toronto with Tom to a one-day trilobite conference at the museum, and even attended a session, thinking it might provide distraction.

A paleontologist, a woman called Margaret Henriksen, from Minneapolis, lectured in a darkened room, and illustrated her talk with a digital representation of a trilobite folding itself into a little ball.

No one has ever seen a trilobite, since they exist only in the fossil record, but the sections of its bony thorax recorded in stone were so perfectly made that, when threatened, these creatures were able to curl up, each segment nesting into the next and protecting the soft animal underbodies.

After the conference in Toronto, some trilobite friends from England wanted to go for a meal at a place called the Frontier Bar on Bloor Street West, where the theme is Wild West.

Tom is writing a paper for the trilobite conference next year in Estonia.

No one knows a thing about the trilobite brain or even how they reproduced sexually.

Barrett stared up at the salmon moon and reached into his pocket to finger the little trilobite before he remembered that he had given it to Hahn.

The trilobite I crawled up on the shore no sand, no beach, just a shelf I of rock and advanced until it was eight or ten feet from the waves.

The trilobite completed its slow perambulation of the shoreline rocks and scuttered back into the sea unharmed.