Forgotten Little Trilobite

[LordTrilobite]

So my father was clearing some of his old stuff and came across this trilobite which he had totally forgotten about.

Roughly twelve years ago my father gave me his fossil collecting which practically got me into seriously collecting fossils.

But aparently this little guy got forgotten for some reason. Now all these years later it turns up.

Since it was so broken up I thought this was a nice project to share.

The unaltered pieces in the original wrapping newspaper. I had already almost thrown the paper away but then I thought it might have a date on it. And sure enough it said it was from 22 december 1986. Which is before I was born so this little trilobite has probably been laying in the same drawer all my life. Which I think is pretty funny.

The trilobite comes from Hällekis Kinnekulle, Sweden and was probably found in the summer of 1986.

And since this is the prep subforum. Here is some progress on the restoration of the loose pieces and prepping of the still embedded parts. Most of the loose trilo fragments belonged to the pygidium. By now I've glued most of them back. But I don't think all the parts have survived. the small piece on the bottom right is the biggest part of the pygidium I still need to glue on but I can't find the underlying matrix that should be under it. Which will make it hard to glue back in place.

The part on the left is mostly just matrix with the negative impressions of the cheek and pygidium. Though there are still some small parts of the genal spike stuck to it. So I'll probably glue that whole thing back and prep away the matrix. I'll probably post more progress later when I'm further along.

After the initial glueing and such it seems there's still a lot of the trilobite that's missing. about a quarter of the pygidium is gone and just one genal spike and an impression of lateral margin has survived.

Still, a nice trilobite to find in a forgotten drawer.

[Auspex]

What a pleasant (re)find

[LordTrilobite]

I'm nearly done with the glueing of the remaining parts. I'll post some progress pics later.

In the mean time I think I've nailed down the species.

Even though it's incomplete It's likely to be one of these, even though mine is not nearly as fine as this one: http://www.triloswed.info/13_11a.gif

A Pseudomegalaspis patagiata. Everything matches up and as far as I know no other trilobites from the location have that combination of such a smooth round pygidium and a large genal spike.

[LordTrilobite]

An update. I've put most parts back to where they came from. There's only one sizable piece of shell left which I still have to figure out where it belongs to. But other than that all parts are back in place.

[squalicorax]

Looks great!