A TRIDENT-BEARING TRILOBITE

A TRIDENT-BEARING TRILOBITE

Waliserops trifurcatus

Devonian

Morocco

Size of fossil: 6.5 cm. A beautifully prepared specimen rising from its stony matrix, displayed in a custom vitrine.

Walliserops, (after Professor O. Walliser of the University of Göttingen) is a genus of spiny phacobid trilobites of the Acastidae family. Found in rocks from the Anti-Atlas mountains of Morocco dating to the Lower to Middle Devonian age, all species of Walliserops possess a "trident" protruding from the glabella, or head section. 

The role of this trident is not well understood — the size of this protuberance, and the amount of energy clearly expended to grow it would indicate that it clearly played an important role. While many theories have been advanced to explain its usage (protection, disguise, sensory apparatus), the most likely explanation is that the trident functioned like a horn, similar to that of modern day Coleoptera such as the Rhinoceros beetle. 

Trilobites are a class of marine arachnomorph arthropods that inhabited the seas during the Paleozoic Era, from the Cambrian through the Permien period. They existed in oceans for over 300 million years, with last of them disappearing during the mass extinction at the end of the Permien period, 250 million years ago —making them one of the most successful species to ever live. With its multitude of spines, in particular those arching over the eyes, this trilobite has the appearance of an alien creature, making it hard to imagine it imagine that they once inhabited our planet in multitudes.