Dalmanites myops

Time was when I had quite an extensive collection of rocks, minerals and fossils but I have given it away and all that remains are pictures of some of the best - see earlier post here. What intrigues me is that, although many memories, such as of people's names, are fading I can often recall instantly the identification of many of these specimens, some of which I found several decades ago.

This is a good example. I first saw a specimen of this trilobite in a drawer in the palaeontology lab at Keele University, some time between 1963 and 1967, and I subsequently found specimens during my time at Ludlow Grammar School between 1971 and 1973, when I found this particularly fine individual.

This is the head, or cephalon, of Dalmanites myops, from the Silurian beds along Wenlock Edge and I was particularly thrilled with it because it had such fine preservation of its multiple-lensed eye - to the extent that I spent hours picking it out of the rock using dental instruments which my dentist had kindly given me.

It was a labour of love but it brought some strange thoughts. This animal, whose whole group is long extinct, last saw the light of day over 400 million years ago while swimming in a warm sea. Now it seems to stare at me as if, perhaps, slightly upset at the sudden exposure.