The largest Australian trilobite has been found

[Logo7]

Newly discovered trilobite remains from the famed Emu Bay Shale on Kangaroo Island, Australia, have been determined to be a new species of the trilobite genus Redlichia. The new species has been given the new species name R. rex, from the Latin word "rex" ("king"), due to its large size and its spined legs that were specialized for crushing and shredding food, which may have consisted of smaller trilobites. The new species grew to around 30 cm in length, twice the size of other Australian trilobites at the time (500 million years ago). Due to the incredible extent or preservation in this formation, several "soft parts" of the animal, including the antennae and legs, were preserved. Some of the remains of R. rex, in addition to those of other trilobites in the region, show injuries that resulted from predators with the ability to crush shells, with additional evidence of this sort of predation resulting from coprolites containing trilobite fossils, which suggests that either a larger predator, such as Anomalocaris, existed in the area or the new species had cannibalistic tendencies. Here is a reconstruction of the new species by paleoartist Katrina Kenny, an image of one of the fossils used to describe the new species, and a link to the paper used to describe this new species.




Paper (abstract only): https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14772019.2019.1605411?journalCode=tjsp20

[Halichoeres]

Man, that's cool. It's big enough to fit in with @Southlands Replicas  chosen scale.