When trilobites ruled the seas

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Trilobites ruled the waves (Image: Riccardo Levi-Setti)


In the The Trilobite Book, Riccardo Levi-Setti's text and photographs paint a stunning picture of the diversity and fascination of the "giant woodlice"


THE past is a foreign country: they do things differently there, runs the famous opener of L. P. Hartley's novel The Go-Between. I don't know what he knew about palaeoecology, but as a description of the seas when trilobites were in their heyday, his words are hard to beat.


Beginning with a basic flanged, flattened, woodlouse-like form, trilobites radiated into burrowers, scurriers, plodders and swimmers. Astonishingly diverse, by virtue of numbers, species and impact, they were major players for over 270 million years.


The Trilobite Book is a tour-de-force, spanning the Cambrian to the Devonian, and roaming from Newfoundland to Morocco. It's hard to know whether to be more impressed by the diversity of trilobite forms, the quality of fossil preservation or the skills of those who prepared the specimens. That task must have taken a deft touch and an uncanny ability to visualise in 3D when you consider the species with spines or defensive protrusions.


The text and photographs, all taken by the author, work beautifully together to build a picture of the intricacy and complexity of trilobites. This is best shown with the eyes, where even the single calcite crystal lenses survived intact. This is the real eye through which trilobites would have seen a world where they did indeed do things differently.


This article appeared in print under the headline "The day of the trilobites"


Adrian Barnett is a rainforest ecologist at Brazil's National Institute of Amazonian Research in Manaus


Issue 2972 of New Scientist magazine


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