Rare Kinzer Wanneria walcottana Trilobite

Description: One of the highlights of a fossils dealer’s life is the very rare opportunity to acquire fossils from an important “old” collection. In this case, a collection amassed over a forty-year period; mostly encompassing fossils from a focused geographic area and time period. Here we are speaking of the Cambrian, Kinzer Formation, of the Lancaster area of Pennsylvania. The collector had special rights and privileges to collect at the classic Getz and Brubacker quarries. These quarries have long since closed. The Brubacker quarry site, now sadly a parking lot. The salient point here is that there will be few if any trilobites excavated from the Kinzer Formation in the future. The only ones available will come from old collections of the last century.

This Wanneria has the instantly recognizable Kinzer type preservation. The specimen is a rust/brown, orange tinged color, fully prone on the rough, hard and platy Kinzer shale. By Kinzer standards this one has good preservation. It is 3D with nice detail and presence. Note how squat and fat this one is.

The Kinzer formation was evidently a deep-water sequence on the eastern side of the Appalachian Margin of Laurentia. These Wannerias and Ollenids, the cousins of the western Poleta and Pioche Formation Nevadias, Olenellus and Esmeraldinas.