Calymene celebra Trilobite from Illinois

Description: It is often that yesterday’s common fossil is today’s rarity, and vice versa!! I don’t know if the collecting quarry is closed, or, no one is taking the time to quarry these, but, they are now scarce. This Calymene is complete, fully inflated and visually impressive. It appears as if it was chiseled out of the finest marble. It’s my last one to offer.

Calymene celebra is a Calymenid trilobite (Order: Phacopida; Family: Calymenidae) coming from the Silurian dolomitic limestone of Grafton, Illinois. The species has been assigned to several different genenera over the past century; Calymene, Flexicalymene, Gravicalymene, and Sthenocalymene. Calymene celebra was chose as the state fossil of Wisconsin in 1985, and it occurs over a wide area in the Midwest US.

This fossil comes from the George Lee Collection of Southern California. Mr. Lee accumulated a virtual where house of fossils over thirty-five years of self-collecting and purchasing. Most of the fossils were acquired during the 1960s through the mid 1990s. Unfortunately, for we collectors, many of these sites and areas are no longer available for collecting. Therefore, many of my offerings are of special importance, as they are now rarely available to the public. Since Mr. Lee’s death, a few years ago, the collection has slowly been liquidated. This fossil came from one of the last available batches sold.