Title text: "The two best reasons to get into fossils are booping trilobites and getting to say the word "fossiliferous" a lot."
Alt text: https://explainxkcd.com/2823#Transcript
This just reminds me how I accidentally destroyed a fossil rolled up trilobite b/c I put it down to sketch it too close to the edge & it proceeded to roll off the desk on the floor where it broke apart. It was preserved for millions of years only to be destroyed by some dumbass college student.
it’s wild to think trilobites as a species existed for 300 million years as a completely unique life form and just disappeared completely with no living direct ancestors
Sometimes it's the same low-Mg calcite that the animal itself precipitated to armor itself with! Some specimens haven't even been recrystallized at all (minerals gradually dissolved and reprecipitated without anything added or removed) though that far back it can be challenging to tell.
