Trilobite - History of Usage and Research

History of Usage and Research

Rev. Edward Lhwyd published in 1698 in The Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, the oldest scientific journal in the English language, part of his letter “Concerning Several Regularly Figured Stones Lately Found by Him", that was accompanied by a page of etchings of fossils. One of his etchings figured a trilobite he found near Llandeilo, probably on the grounds of Lord Dynefor's castle, he described as “… the skeleton of some flat Fish …".

The discovery of Calymene blumenbachi (the Dudley locust) in 1749 by Charles Lyttleton, could be identified as the beginning of trilobite research. Lyttleton submitted a letter to the Royal Society of London in 1750 concerning a “petrified insect” he found in the “limestone pits at Dudley”. In 1754, Manuel Mendez da Costa proclaimed that the Dudley locust was not an insect, but instead belonged to “the crustaceous tribe of animals.” He proposed to call the Dudley specimens Pediculus marinus major trilobos (large trilobed marine louse), a name which lasted well into the 1800s. German naturalist Johann Walch, who executed the first inclusive study of this group, proposed the use of the name “trilobite”. He considered it appropriate to derive the name from the unique three-lobed character of the central axis and a pleural zone to each side.

Written descriptions of trilobites date possibly from the third century BC and definitely from the fourth century AD. The Spanish geologists Eladio Liñán and Rodolfo Gozalo argue that some of the fossils described in Greek and Latin lapidaries as scorpion stone, beetle stone, and ant stone, refer to trilobite fossils. Less ambiguous references to trilobite fossils can be found in Chinese sources. Fossils from the Kushan formation of northeastern China were prized as inkstones and decorative pieces.

In the New World, American fossil hunters found plentiful deposits of Elrathia kingi in western Utah in the 1860s. Until the early 1900s, the Ute Native Americans of Utah wore these trilobites, which they called pachavee (little water bug), as amulets. A hole was bored in the head and the fossil was worn on a string. According to the Ute themselves, trilobite necklaces protect against disease and bullets. In 1931, Frank Beckwith uncovered evidence of the Ute use of trilobites. Travelling through the badlands, he photographed two petroglyphs that most likely represent trilobites. On the same trip he examined a burial, of unknown age, with a drilled trilobite fossil laying in the chest cavity of the interred. Since then, trilobite amulets have been found all over the Great Basin, as well as in British Columbia and Australia. In the 1880s, archaeologists discovered a much handled trilobite fossil that had been drilled as if to be worn as a pendant, in the Grotte du Trilobite near Yonne, France. The occupation stratum, in which the trilobite was found, has been dated as fifteen thousand years old. Because the pendant was handled so much, the species of trilobite cannot be determined. This type of trilobite is not found around Yonne, so it may have been highly prized and traded from elsewhere.