Trilobite beetle
The trilobite beetle is one of the strangest beetles in the world. The female never turns into a normal beetle. She stays flat and dark with big spiky plates, and looks like a trilobite, a sea animal that died out long, long ago.
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Fun facts
The males look completely different. They are small, about 8 to 9 millimetres long, and look like normal beetles with wings.
For a long time nobody could find the males. A Swedish scientist called Eric Mjöberg finally described them in 1925.
Trilobite beetles appeared about 47 million years ago, around 200 million years after real trilobites had died out.
The female keeps her larva shape for her whole life, even when she is grown up.
Most asked questions about Trilobite beetle
?Is the trilobite beetle a real trilobite?
No. Trilobites died out hundreds of millions of years ago. The trilobite beetle just looks like one.
?How big is a trilobite beetle?
The females are about 4 to 8 centimetres long. The males are tiny, less than 1 centimetre.
?What does the trilobite beetle eat?
The females eat rotting wood, fungi and slime moulds on the forest floor.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Platerodrilus
- Group
- Beetles
- Family
- Lycidae
- Classification
- Insecta > Coleoptera > Lycidae
- Lives on
- Asia
- Also known as
- Trilobite larva, Sumatran trilobite larva
Where the facts come from
- Platerodrilus (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 Tiia Monto. CC BY-SA 3.0, 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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