Trilobite News

[Richard W Travsky <rtravsky@uwyo.edu>]

Has very interesting picture.

http://dsc.discovery.com/news/briefs/20030929/seacreature.html

Sept. 29, 2003  British and Canadian scientists have discovered the unique
fossil of a prehistoric sea creature with eyes raised like "twin towers,"
they reported in the latest issue of the journal Science.

Living on the sea floor some 400 million years ago in what is now Morocco,
the hard shelled, many legged animal is the only known complete specimen
of the phacopoid trilobite Erbenochile. 
...
Unlike other trilobite's eyes, the giant eyes on this specimen were made
with stacked layers of lenses that rose like twin towers above the head.

"The compass of the eyes shows that they commanded a 360-degree sweep in
the horizontal plane. The high elevation of the eyes meant that the animal
could even see backward over its thorax," Fortey and Chatterton wrote.

But the animal showed an even more unusual feature at the top of each eye:
a lobe that extended out of the tower as an eye shade or visor. 
...