Creature Feature: Trilobite Beetles.

If you have ever gone through a good class on the history of the Earth, you have seen a trilobite. Trilobites are those little (or sometimes not so little) invertebrates. They are currently extinct, but their presence is so ubiquitous in the fossil record that it is possible to tell what era a fossil bed is from based on the trilobites alone.


They're also found in Pokemon, which says something about their popularity.

Researchers can claim that trilobites are extinct all they like. The trilobite beetles (genus Duliticola) will flip them the bird however a beetle can.



Trilobite beetles are native to the wetter rain forests of India and Asia. As such, they are naturally endangered. Like bagworms (...for those of you who know WHAT those are), only the males get a winged adult form.

The females look like fossils. ON ACID.



Several other beetles, such as the netwing larva above and baby fireflies, also resemble trilobites on acid. Just sayin'.

The females look like fossils. ON ACID.



Strangely, there is NOTHING on these creatures. They are endangered, rare, and trippy as all get-out, but Wiki only has a paragraph on trilobite beetles. Given the widespread nature of trilobites in the past, why has no more effort gone into studying these guys? Are all the important scientists still wasting their time trying to get pandas to mate?

Give up already. The bear's doomed.