Trilobite Fossils
for Sale

Fossil Mall has the largest diversity of trilobites on the Internet, many of which are rare and exceptional specimens.

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Pangaea Fossils
Western Fossils

The Paleozoic is often called the age of the trilobite.Trilobites particularly flourished in the oceans of the Cambrian and Ordovician periods, beginning around 540 million years ago, with a diminishing number of families persisting until the Permian. The number of families actually peaked in the Late Cambrian when an extinction event removed many. The morphological diversity actually peaked in the Ordovician. Many more families were removed at the end of the Ordovician 440 million years ago during a great ice age where ice sheets advanced to the equator. The diminished number of trilobite families that survived to the Silurian radiated into new and exotic forms, and still more exotic spiny and pustulose forms in the Devonian. The Devonian was punctuated by periods of rising seas that disrupted the reef systems where the trilobites flourished forcing selective adaptation. The end of the Devonian saw the Frasnian-Famennian event where only Proteus survived into the Carboniferous. Despite reduced ancestry, with decent with modification ruling, these trilobites filled the same ecological niches such that adaptation led to a repeating of many of the forms of their extinct cousins. While the genetic path was assuredly different, the newly evolved forms had recognizable morphological similitude with those long extinct. Regrettably, trilobites never truly recovered in the Carboniferous, with but a handful of genera extant by the Permian. Failing to adapt to deep-water habitats, their vulnerability to climatic change remained and led to their disappearance prior to yet another great mass extinction at the end of the Permian. The age of the trilobite yielded to the age of the insect.

Learn more about Trilobites in the Fossil Mall Science Section

Cambrian, Ordovician, Siluran, and Devonian Trilobites

Trilobites from Russia, Morocco, Germany, Bohemia, UK, Czech Republic, Spain, Portugal, and China

North American Trilobites from: California, Canada, Oklahoma, Ohio, Nevada, New York, Utah