Marie Kenaley, age 12, of Peabody, Mass.
Is a trilobite good to eat?
Nowadays, nobody ever goes hunting for trilobites. In fact, no human being ever tasted one of these crusty sea creatures. We do however eat what may be his distant relatives and find them delicious. They are the lobsters, the crabs and the shrimps ‑ full of fine flavor, body‑building proteins and valuable minerals from the salty sea, Birds, frogs and countless other small animals feed on insects which also may be distant kin of the trilobite.
No one has tasted trilobite meat, because these crusty creatures have been extinct for millions of years. The last of them said goodbye to the world with the Paleozoic Era of earthts history. The trilobites began with this era about 500 million years ago. The Cambrian Period, which was the first chapter of this era, has been called the Age of the Trilobites. For at that time, these crusty little creatures were the most plentiful and the most advanced animals on earth.
They lived in the fresh water of the ancient seas, hiding under rocks and scuttling over the sand and muddy floors. There were small trilobites no bigger than beetles and giants two feet long. There were countless varieties just an inch or two long. Every trilobite wore a crust of armor divided into segments somewhat like those of a 'centipede. Every trilobite had a body in three parts, or lobes, which is why he is named a trilobite. His crusty coat covered a head, a chest or thorax, and a tail section.
Life changed and developed slowly in the ancient seas. After millions of years, other creatures entered the watery world, some of them hungry hunters of trilobite meat, For countless ages, the trilobites kept pace with the times,
They changed themselves to correct basic mistakes.
The armor along the back of the trilobite was much stronger than that on the underside. Gradually, slowly, certain trilobites learned to coil themselves around to protect their softer undersides. But even so, the struggle for survival was too much. For more than 100 million years, they were the most‑advanced animals on earth, Then they began to decline and the last of them said goodbye to the world about 180 million years ago. Among modern animals, the strange horseshoe crab of Alaska most resembles the ancient trilobites. Some experts think he may be a direct descendant. In any case he is good to eat and his meat is very nutritious.
We know about the trilobites from the fossil records they left in the ancient rocks. Certain rocks of the Cambrian Period are solid masses of trilobite fossils, big and small, coiled and straight. Like the modern crab, these ancient creatures shed their crusty coats as their bodies grew bigger and many of their fossil remains are merely cast‑off shells.