A. Fernández-Fernández et al.

Science has an interesting story about a trilobite in ancient Rome.  The ancient romans loved their fossils and displayed them for curious visitors.  Archaeologists working in Spain have found a trilobite as part of roman jewelry.  This is the eleventh trilobite found in an archaeological context.  See the paper “Significance of fossils in Roman times: the first trilobite find in an early Empire context” in the jounal Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences.

Trilobites are extinct marine arthropods that evolved more than 521 million years ago and are relatively common in the fossil record. The fossil described in the new study was unearthed in a refuse pile near an elite burial at a site in northwestern Spain called A Cibdá, which was a Roman-occupied settlement between the first and third centuries C.E. Based on its chemical fingerprint and distinct red hues, the researchers were able to match the specimen to others harvested from an outcrop of 460-million-year-old shale about 430 kilometers to the southeast.

The back of the fossil is polished and etched with several scrape marks, suggesting it was flattened to display the segmented side of the animal’s exoskeleton. The researchers argue such modifications resemble jewelry discovered elsewhere in Rome, and that it was likely embedded within a leather sheath and worn as a bracelet or encased within metal braces and worn as a necklace. It’s the first trilobite associated with the Roman world. It and other trilobite fossils may have influenced other Roman jewelry made from jet or black glass that bears a similarly segmented pattern, and that archaeologists call Trilobitenperlen.