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Fossil of a trilobite
About this photograph
- Date created
- March 24, 2007
- License
- This photograph copyright ©2007. Terms of use
See this photograph in context
- Two worlds: Prehistory, contact, and the Lost Colony: First part of a North Carolina history text for secondary students, covering the land, American Indians before contact with Europeans, Spanish exploration, the Roanoke colony, and the Columbian Exchange. (Page 1.2)
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- Search LEARN NC for Burgess shale, Cambrian period, fossils, and trilobite.
In the classroom
- See our collection of articles on visual literacy for ideas on using photographs meaningfully in the classroom.
The structure of a trilobite, including the antennae and legs, can be seen in the Burgess Shale, a rock formation found in the Canadian Rockies in 1909.
This trilobite lived some 505 million years ago. Trilobites were a class of ocean-dwelling artrhopods that first emerged some 540 million years ago and became extinct at the end of the Permian period 250 million years ago. Trilobites had a hard exoskeleton made of minerals, and these exoskeletons were frequently preserved as fossils. Scientists have identified some 17,000 species of trilibites from the fossil record.
The Burgess Shale contains a vast fossil record that provided the first glimpse into the diverse animal life of the Cambrian Period (542–488 million years ago).
