amnhnyc:It’s time for Trilobite Tuesday! Trilobites were among the most successful creatures ever to
amnhnyc:It’s time for Trilobite Tuesday! Trilobites were among the most successful creatures ever to exist on Earth. Their march through evolutionary time began back in the Lower Cambrian, some 521 million years ago, and lasted for nearly 270 million years, until the end of the Permian, 252 million years ago. During this unfathomable length of time (which ostensibly bookends the entire Paleozoic Era), these highly adaptable arthropods filled virtually every available marine niche while producing over 25,000 scientifically recognized species. Certain localities around the world – including key Carboniferous (Mississippian & Pennsylvanian) and Permian outcrops in Kazakhstan, Belgium China and New Mexico (home of this Pudoproetus ferlingensis)– have produced fossilized examples of the diminutive proetida order, usually an inch or less in size, that represent the last members of the noble trilobite dynasty. And while these end-of-the-line trilobites apparently filled a wide variety of oceanic habitats – ranging from deep open water to shallow continental shelves – their versatility wasn’t enough to save them from their eventual fate. As life on our ever-changing planet has continually proven, nothing lasts forever, and for reasons that continue to both confound and fascinate scientists, the end of the Permian also signaled the end of trilobites… along with 90 percent of life around the globe, an event which represents the greatest mass extinction in the history of Planet Earth. -- source link
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