Many people may feel strange when it comes to trilobites, as if there is no such species in our living creatures. Yes, it has been extinct for a long time, and today I will talk to you about the past and present lives of the trilobite.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="2" > general feature</h1>
Trilobites are an extinct class in the phylum Arthropods, and it lived only in the paleozoic oceans, so it lived in limited times and environments. Its body is flat, with a hard carapace on the back, which can be divided into three obvious parts from top to bottom: head carapace, breastplate and tail carapace, from left to right can be divided into rib lobes, axial lobes and rib lobes, so that the upper and lower three points, the characteristics of the left and right three points are also the origin of its trilobite name.
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Trilobite dorsal structure diagram
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="7" > the age of existence</h1>
Trilobites have been present since the early Cambrian period, when its genus was already abundant and spread around the world, so scientists believe that its ancestors appeared long before the Cambrian.
The trilobites of the early Cambrian period are very obvious, that is, the head carapace is very large, the head saddle is long, the tail carapace is very small, and the chest segment is many, represented by the famous Lederliki insect order.
Lederliki worm
Over the next few hundred million years of evolution, the trilobite gradually became smaller and the structure on the head carapace became simple, and many of the previous structural structures did not develop. On the breastplate, the number of thoracic segments gradually decreases, while the caudal nail gradually becomes complex, forming different types.
At the end of the Permian, trilobites declined sharply and eventually became extinct, disappearing into the long process of biological evolution, and we can only trace the changes of hundreds of millions of years ago through fossils.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="15" > marine animals</h1>
Many people who see trilobite fossils do not think that it is actually a marine animal, because the carapace on its back is very hard, much like some animals living on land. But it's actually a real marine animal.
Judging from the fossils found, the fossils of trilobites are found in marine formations, and no fossils of trilobites have ever been found in continental formations.
Judging from its body structure, its abdomen is very soft and has crawling foot, and its eyes are on the dorsal side of the cephaloid, positioned like the eyes of a fish, so it is living on the abdomen close to the seabed. In addition to this, it has a flat body and gill-like outer limbs for swimming, and probably the only drawback is that it does not have a streamlined shape and may not swim as fast.
The truth about its extinction will be covered in more detail in a later article.