Treasure of the month

January 2017

Trilobite

The treasure of the month January is a fossilized trilobite (genus: Phacops) from the LIB paleontological collection. Trilobites belong to a class of extinct arthropods that inhabited the oceans even before the dinosaurs, until about 250 million years ago, and are among the most important guide fossils in the history of the Earth. Their remains are used to determine the relative ages of sedimentary rocks.

The animal from the LIB collection is from the Hunsrück Shale, a sedimentary rock about 400 million years old. The underside of the animal is so well preserved that the individual legs and even the antennae can be recognized.

It was described in the journal Natur und Museum as early as 1932 and is one of the few pieces in the collection that survived an air raid on Hamburg in 1943 and was recovered from the rubble of the former Geological State Institute. However, the treasure did not remain unscathed: while sediments from the Hunsrück Shale are actually dark gray in color, this piece was discolored reddish by the heat of the fire.

Photo: UHH/ CeNak, Kotthoff