States (in the U.S.) Where Trilobites Have and have not been Found

[Top Trilo]

I did lots of online searching on which states trilobites have and haven't been found in, and compiled this. Its not as straight forward as you might think.

 

Green means trilobites have been found in that state on the surface and are native to that area.

Yellow means technically a trilobite has been found there but was found below the surface or the rocks are not native to the state.

Red means no trilobite has ever been found in the state except for when humans have transported them there.

 

Green: Alaska, Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin, Wyoming

 

Yellow: Florida, Louisiana, North Dakota

 

Red: Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii. No trilobites have been found in these states.

 

The only trilobites in Florida and North Dakota came from cores that came from very far below the surface. Louisiana has trilobites from gravel that were transported via rivers from the Tennessee region.

 

I have found very little references on trilobites coming from Oregon and Mississippi but have heard they exist.

 

As far as Washington DC goes, I haven't seen anything that has said a trilobite has been found there but there are Paleozoic rocks at the surface according to macrostrat and trilobites have been found not too far away so I left it grey.

 

Does anyone see anything incorrect with the above information? Before I undertook this task I knew trilobites were widespread but not this widespread. Trilobites are everywhere.  I thought I'd share with the group.

[piranha]

Here are the relevant citations on the trilobites from Mississippi and the lone taxon from Oregon: Cummingella oregonensis.  This <LINK> has an extensive list of trilobite citations. Presently there are 16K+ entries (1835-2021) and previous years in process of being added every week. Use CTRL + F to activate the keyword search function for ease of use.

 

 

Dockery, D.T., Merrill, R.K. 1984
Lower Devonian (Helderbergian) Trilobites from the Ross Limestone in Mississippi.
Mississippi Geology, 5(2):11-15  PDF LINK

 

Dockery, D.T., Starnes, J.E., Thompson, D.E., Beiser, L. 2008

Rocks and Fossils Found in Mississippi's Gravel Deposits.

Mississippi Geological Survey, Circular, 7:1-25  PDF LINK

 

Lowe, E.N. 1930
Paleozoic Rocks.

Mississippi State Geological Survey Bulletin, 23:1-212  PDF LINK

 

Merrill, R.K., Gann, D.E., Jennings, S.P. 1988
Tishomingo County Geology and Mineral Resources.
Mississippi Department of Natural Resources, Bureau of Geology Bulletin, 127:1-178  PDF LINK

 

Hahn, G., Hahn, R., Hanger, R.A., Strong, E.E. 2000
Lower Permian Trilobites from Oregon, USA.

Geologica et Palaeontologica, 34:125-135

[Al Dente]

I’m not aware of trilobites being found in North Carolina. The Precambrian Pteridinium was originally misidentified as a trilobite.

[A.C.]

3 hours ago, Al Dente said:

I’m not aware of trilobites being found in North Carolina. The Precambrian Pteridinium was originally misidentified as a trilobite.

https://earth.geology.yale.edu/~ajs/1973/ajs_273A_11.pdf/196.pdf

 

There seem to be a few references of trilobites being found in N.C.

 

@Top Trilo great job on this! It makes me want to make some maps of my own. It could be neat to compare Trilobite orders to states, species so on and so forth. 

 

When you say below the surface what constitutes that? Is that literally needing to be split open (no surface scanning) or is that rock under the exposed formations? (Needing to come from quarry activities)

[Al Dente]

1 hour ago, A.C. said:

There seem to be a few references of trilobites being found in N.C.

 

The linked paper is the paper that misidentified a Precambrian Pteridinium as a trilobite. What are the other references for trilobites in NC?

 

[IsaacTheFossilMan]

I can't find any N.C. trilobite fossils, because interestingly enough, North Carolina one Cambrian fossil, the only known one being Skolithos. Few trilos are known from SC in the same age deposits, so it's possible that there are some trilobite fossils hiding in NC somewhere.

 

SC source: The Paleontology Portal (paleoportal.org)

[FossilDAWG]

43 minutes ago, IsaacTheFossilMan said:

I can't find any N.C. trilobite fossils, because interestingly enough, North Carolina one Cambrian fossil, the only known one being Skolithos. Few trilos are known from SC in the same age deposits, so it's possible that there are some trilobite fossils hiding in NC somewhere.

 

SC source: The Paleontology Portal (paleoportal.org)

Possible I suppose but highly unlikely.  The few trilobites from South Carolina came from a very localized area within a highly deformed schist formation, where the rock was not quite as deformed and metamorphosed.  The equivalent formation in North Carolina is even more metamorphosed.  The main South Carolina site was a very small roadcut, mostly exposed in a ditch on a very small road near Batesburg.  I visited the site a few years ago and and found no trace of the roadcut remaining.  Other localities in the area consisted of erratic boulders, not actual bedrock exposures.

 

Don

[Top Trilo]

@piranha Thank you for compiling all these sources, I do look through them but I really should do that more often. Its an invaluable asset to this forum.

  

6 hours ago, Al Dente said:

I’m not aware of trilobites being found in North Carolina. The Precambrian Pteridinium was originally misidentified as a trilobite.

1 hour ago, Al Dente said:

The linked paper is the paper that misidentified a Precambrian Pteridinium as a trilobite. What are the other references for trilobites in NC?

I did some additional searches and apparently my original search didn't go deep enough to be totally accurate. Looking back on the sources I found for NC, they only mention the misidentified Precambrian fossil or fossils near the border with North Carolina in Tennessee or South Carolina. I guess it should be marked as red then. Thank you for pointing that out and helping me yet again.

[Top Trilo]

2 hours ago, A.C. said:

@Top Trilo great job on this! It makes me want to make some maps of my own. It could be neat to compare Trilobite orders to states, species so on and so forth. 

 

When you say below the surface what constitutes that? Is that literally needing to be split open (no surface scanning) or is that rock under the exposed formations? (Needing to come from quarry activities)

Thank you, the "below the surface" vs on the surface was to just split the difference between Florida and North Dakota from the rest of the states where technically trilobites have been found but only thousands of feet below the surface. I didn't think that should qualify as "green" so I guess anything that's not from a drill core.

[Top Trilo]

So here is the revised map,

[IsaacTheFossilMan]

4 hours ago, FossilDAWG said:

Possible I suppose but highly unlikely.  The few trilobites from South Carolina came from a very localized area within a highly deformed schist formation, where the rock was not quite as deformed and metamorphosed.  The equivalent formation in North Carolina is even more metamorphosed.  The main South Carolina site was a very small roadcut, mostly exposed in a ditch on a very small road near Batesburg.  I visited the site a few years ago and and found no trace of the roadcut remaining.  Other localities in the area consisted of erratic boulders, not actual bedrock exposures.

 

Don

 

Of course - there were definitely trilobites living in what is now NC, but, did they stand the test of time, is the real question...

[Crusty_Crab]

The sheer amount of green is informative. Taking a step further, it seems to suggest that generally, if Paleozoic rocks can be found on the surface, then remnants of trilobites can also be found. Is that correct?

Since paleozoic rocks are widespread, so are trilobites. 

19 hours ago, Top Trilo said:

Does anyone see anything incorrect with the above information? Before I undertook this task I knew trilobites were widespread but not this widespread. Trilobites are everywhere.  I thought I'd share with the group.

 

[RCFossils]

I believe a trilobite has been found in Florida.

it was recovered from a drill core.

This is a picture of the cast.

[Top Trilo]

13 minutes ago, Crusty_Crab said:

The sheer amount of green is informative. Taking a step further, it seems to suggest that generally, if Paleozoic rocks can be found on the surface, then remnants of trilobites can also be found. Is that correct?

Since paleozoic rocks are widespread, so are trilobites. 

Yes, I'd say that holds true, when I compare macrostrat.org with the Paleozoic restriction, it very closely matches with https://paleobiodb.org/navigator/ when you search for trilobite.

I attached two images from the above sources of the lower 48 states.

 

7 minutes ago, RCFossils said:

I believe a trilobite has been found in Florida.

it was recovered from a drill core.

This is a picture of the cast.

Yes, you are correct, a trilobite has been found in Florida, but it was from far below the surface (from a drill core) which is why its yellow on the map and not red. Thank you for the image.

[IsaacTheFossilMan]

If anyone wanted to read into the FL trilo: Ref4489 | BioSTOR.org

 

Alex's graph of FL is indeed correct!

 

 

[Top Trilo]

15 minutes ago, IsaacTheFossilMan said:

If anyone wanted to read into the FL trilo: Ref4489 | BioSTOR.org

 

Alex's graph of FL is indeed correct!

There also a TFF thread, 

http://www.thefossilforum.com/index.php?/topic/28157-florida-trilobite/

 

[IsaacTheFossilMan]

19 hours ago, Top Trilo said:

There also a TFF thread, 

http://www.thefossilforum.com/index.php?/topic/28157-florida-trilobite/

 

 

Indeed, but the link Piranha put was broken...  

[piranha]

38 minutes ago, IsaacTheFossilMan said:

Indeed, but the link Piranha put was broken...  

 

 

At long last......the 10 year old link is broken no more!

[Plax]

Am thinking that some have been found in those chert pebbles along Delaware's shore. Very poor and not technically from Delaware but transported there. Don't make it green on my say so! 

[Top Trilo]

13 minutes ago, Plax said:

Am thinking that some have been found in those chert pebbles along Delaware's shore. Very poor and not technically from Delaware but transported there. Don't make it green on my say so! 

Thank you for this. I did some additional searches and believe you are correct. I found this thread, which contains a trilobite from Delaware. That deserves to make it yellow.

Here is the updated map yet again.

[FossilDAWG]

The Ordovician Red River and Stony Mountain formations are present in the subsurface in the Williston Basin in North Dakota.  Both formations outcrop to the north in Manitoba, and both contain fairly abundant trilobites.  Equivalent formations in South Dakota and Wyoming also contain trilobites.  It's highly likely that trilobites are also present in North Dakota, although I haven't found any reference yet to them being identified in well samples.

 

Don

[piranha]

53 minutes ago, FossilDAWG said:

It's highly likely that trilobites are also present in North Dakota, although I haven't found any reference yet to them being identified in well samples.

 

Brachymetopus sp.

 

Thrasher, L.C. 1987

Macrofossils and Stratigraphic Subdivisions of the Bakken Formation (Devonian—Mississippian), Williston Basin, North Dakota.

Fifth International Williston Basin Symposium: Regina, Saskatchewan. Geological Society Special Publication, 9:53-67  PDF LINK

 

Hystricurus sp. – Praecoparia wibauxensis

 

Lochman, C. 1966
Lower Ordovician (Arenig) Faunas From the Williston Basin, Montana and North Dakota.
Journal of Paleontology, 40(3):512-548

[FossilDAWG]

[Quarryman Dave]

On 7/25/2022 at 8:35 PM, Top Trilo said:

I did lots of online searching on which states trilobites have and haven't been found in, and compiled this. Its not as straight forward as you might think.

 

Green means trilobites have been found in that state on the surface and are native to that area.

Yellow means technically a trilobite has been found there but was found below the surface or the rocks are not native to the state.

Red means no trilobite has ever been found in the state except for when humans have transported them there.

 

Green: Alaska, Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin, Wyoming

 

Yellow: Florida, Louisiana, North Dakota

 

Red: Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii. No trilobites have been found in these states.

 

The only trilobites in Florida and North Dakota came from cores that came from very far below the surface. Louisiana has trilobites from gravel that were transported via rivers from the Tennessee region.

 

I have found very little references on trilobites coming from Oregon and Mississippi but have heard they exist.

 

As far as Washington DC goes, I haven't seen anything that has said a trilobite has been found there but there are Paleozoic rocks at the surface according to macrostrat and trilobites have been found not too far away so I left it grey.

 

Does anyone see anything incorrect with the above information? Before I undertook this task I knew trilobites were widespread but not this widespread. Trilobites are everywhere.  I thought I'd share with the group.

Is the rock layers deep in Florida paleozoic?

[Top Trilo]

5 minutes ago, Quarryman Dave said:

Is the rock layers deep in Florida paleozoic?

The link @piranha has in his original topic says it came "from core taken between 5154 and 5162 feet depth"