Olenellus thompsoni Kinzer 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 is now sadly a parking lot. The salient point here is that there will be few if any trilobites excavated in the Kinzer Formation in the future. The only ones available will come from old collections of the last century.

This Olenellus has the typical Kinzer type preservation. The specimen is a rust orange color, fully prone on the rough hard and blotchy Kinzer shale. By Kinzer standards this one has excellent preservation. It is 3D with good detail and presence. There is a gouge on the right hand side of the cephalon. The glabella shows some abrasion. The long tail spine is fully intact. The fossil was split and repaired.

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 Formation Nevadias and Esmeraldinas.