Geology / Gallery

Dalmanites Myops (2)

Trilobites are perhaps the most distinctive Palaeozoic fossil. Their prominent compound 'eyes' were the earliest and most advanced visual organ. Living in shallow marine environment principally as scavengers they are often well preserved and locally an abundant fossil. Although they look superficially somewhat similar to wood lice there is no real relationship at all.

Confined to the Silurian (about 40million years of existence before it evolved into a new Dalmanites species) Dalmanites Myops is abundant on Wenlock Edge and particularly in the Ludlow series sediments above the Wenlock series when the sea began to deepen and the reef systems began to dwindle in the colder, muddier water. However this trilobite seemed to cope happily with this. These specimens were found; in Ludlow mudstone in Mortimer Forest and the Wenlock Shale at Upper Millchope on the Wenlock Edge (see specimen photograph) both muddy sediments with not a great variety of other life in it. This species is normally found only as the cephalon (head) or pygidium (tail) and not as the whole creature since they shed their exoskeletons periodically, and the bodies would also easily break up into segments after death.

This specimen was kindly photographed for us by Merlin

Division Name

Phylum Not yet agreed

Class Trilobita

Order Phacopida

Super Family Dalmanitdae

Fossil gallery