Trilobite - Black

TRILOBITE

Trilobites were a very successful arthropods that make up the most common fossils found, flourishing on our planet nearly 600 million years ago in Cambrian time, long before fish swam through the seas or any living thing crawled on land. They scuried across every corner of the ocean floor for over 350 million years, evolving in to some equally beautiful and bizarre variations, finally disappearing in the great extinction event of the Permian era, just before the dinosaurs appeared. The discovery of trilobites through out the world, has led to amazing breakthroughs in proving everything from the existence of prehistoric inland seas now long since disappeared, to continental drift, and even the evolutionary origin of species. Thomas Jefferson was an avid collector of trilobite fossils. Ancient people from Native Americans to Egyptians, wore them as amulets.

My trilobite drawing was the original illustration that kicked off Cotton Crustacean. As one of the most popular prehistoric critters outside of dinosaurs, it was the ideal choice for our first design. Trilobites are the tip of the Paleozoic iceberg. After you learn about these guys, you’ll discover all the crazy things that tried to eat them, revealing the uncanny diversity of all the other animals that swam the seas throughout hundreds of millions of years of explosive evolution.

-Aaron John Gregory, Cotton Crustacean