Calymene Trilobite Fossil Morocco – Upper Ordovician Age

This Calymene Trilobite Fossil is a striking, naturally preserved specimen with a clearly visible segmented body, rounded head and broad tail section. Its warm earthy brown, tan and reddish tones give the fossil a wonderful natural appearance, while the raised segments make the anatomy easy to appreciate even for someone new to fossil collecting. 

Specimen Details

✓ SPECIMEN: Calymene Trilobite Fossil
✓ SPECIES: Colpocoryphe sp.
✓ AGE: Upper Ordovician, approximately 445 million years old
✓ FORMATION: Ktaoua Group
✓ LOCATION: Jebel Tiskouine, Anti-Atlas Region, Morocco
✓ SIZE: 45mm × 73mm × 22mm
✓ WEIGHT: 70 grams
✓ CONDITION: No repairs

The Story Behind the Fossil

Trilobites were ancient marine arthropods that lived in Earth's oceans for more than 250 million years. They first appeared around 520 million years ago and developed into thousands of different forms. Their bodies were divided into three main sections — the head, segmented thorax and tail — with a hard outer skeleton that helped many trilobites become well preserved as fossils. They are distant relatives of modern arthropods such as horseshoe crabs, although they are not direct ancestors of today's crabs or lobsters.

This specimen is identified as Colpocoryphe sp., a trilobite from the Upper Ordovician, a time when much of what is now Morocco formed part of an ancient marine environment. Trilobites lived in a variety of ways: some moved across the seafloor searching for food, while others were adapted to swimming or burrowing. Their diets varied between groups and could include organic material on the seafloor, small organisms and decaying matter. For individual Colpocoryphe specimens, the exact diet cannot be determined from the fossil alone.

The fossils of the Jebel Tiskouine area are preserved in the Ktaoua Group, which contains Upper Ordovician fossil-bearing rocks of Morocco's Anti-Atlas. Research on the region records Colpocoryphe among the trilobites found in these deposits.  After these animals died, their remains settled onto the ancient seafloor and could become buried by accumulating sediment. Over immense spans of time, the sediments hardened into rock, preserving their remains. Much later, geological uplift and erosion exposed these fossil-bearing rocks in the Anti-Atlas Mountains, where specimens can now be collected. The trilobites themselves eventually disappeared from the fossil record near the end of the Permian, around 252 million years ago.

With its clearly defined segments, natural earthy colouring and undamaged, unrepaired condition, this specimen is an accessible and fascinating introduction to the world of fossil collecting. Display it in a collection, curiosity cabinet or natural history display and enjoy owning a genuine connection to an ocean that existed hundreds of millions of years ago.