Elrathia
Elrathia was a trilobite, a sea creature with a hard, smooth, oval shell, a distant relative of today's insects and crabs. It crawled on the sea floor more than 500 million years ago. Its fossils are so common that it is the trilobite people know best.
When did it live?
How fast is it?
Fun facts
One fossil collector dug up about 1.5 million of them in 20 years.
Its body had about 13 segments in the middle, like a stack of tiny rings.
It lived in water with so little oxygen that most other animals could not live there. It is the oldest known animal to do that.
Its name comes from a place called Elrath in Alabama.
It was a medium-sized trilobite, and its shell got narrower towards the back.
Most asked questions about Elrathia
?When did Elrathia live?
In the middle of the Cambrian period, more than 500 million years ago.
?Where are Elrathia fossils found?
Mostly in Utah in the United States, where there are huge numbers of them.
?What is a trilobite?
A sea animal with a hard shell and many legs that lived long ago. Trilobites are distant relatives of insects, spiders and crabs.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Elrathia
- Group
- Prehistoric giants
- Classification
- Trilobita > Ptychopariida
Where the facts come from
- Elrathia (Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0): what it looks like, where it lives, what it eats, sizes and fun facts, retold in simple words.
- Picture by Wilson44691. Public domain, Wikimedia Commons. The round sticker of this bug is cut from the same picture.
If we got something wrong, sorry, we are bug fans, not a science journal. Tell us at [email protected] and we will fix it.
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