The first Bestseller

Oversized Woodlice

Trilobites, like the super-predator Anomalocaris, belonged to the group of arthropods. The term arthropod is composed of the Greek words for joint and foot. In addition to trilobites, this group includes animals as diverse as insects, millipedes, crustaceans, and arachnids.

Around 80 percent of all known recent animal species, which are non-fossil, are arthropods. Among them are almost 1 million species of insects, 16,000 millipedes, about 100,000 arachnids and about 50,000 crustaceans.

The trilobites themselves looked like large woodlice and, despite their rather inconspicuous appearance, were one of the first great success stories of evolution.

They first appeared in the Cambrian period, nearly 500 million years ago, before disappearing again in the Permian period, about 250 million years ago, in a great mass extinction that killed 95 per cent of all marine life forms. With a time span of about 250 million years, this makes them one of the first evolutionary bestsellers.