Basilicus barrandei Trilobite

 

This is an image of a Basilicus barrandi (Hall, 1851) that appeared in plate 1, figure 5 Notes on the Ontogeny of Isotelus Gigas Dekay by Percy E. Raymond April 1914. This specimen was found at the Black River at the quarry on Limestone Creek near Platteville, Wisconsin, USA (type locality). The fossil is #34 of the Whitney collection at the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard University.

UPDATE (2-12-2022): After researching more about who this species was named for and looking it up at Harvard's Museum of Comparative Zoology, the species name was published with the wrong spelling. The name should be Basilicus barrandei. James Hall originally named it wrong in 1851 as Asaphus barrandi in the publication Report on the Geology of the Lake Superior Land District by John Wells Foster, Josiah Dwight Whitney, James Hall, Charles Whittlesey, and William Dwight Whitney. Percy Raymond left the name spelling like that in the 1914 publication to match it.

The species appears to be named for French palaeontologist Joachim Barrande (1799-1883).

Below is the description by James Hall in 1851 on pages 210 and 211. Source can be found at HathiTrust Digital Library.

Cryptolithus tessellatus Trilobite Drawing

 

This image created by Doctor Elvira Wood and published in 1920 in The Appendages, Anatomy, and Relationships of Trilobites by Percy E. Raymond. It is of a Cryptolithus tessellatus (Green, 1832) trilobite. The creature lived in the Ordovician Period. This image was a restoration and not a direct drawing of an actual specimen. Trilobites like this are found in Carroll County, Kentucky.

I am not sure if an intact one has been found in Kentucky. The Cincinnati Dry Dredger's web site has a page for this trilobite showing an intact fossil. http://www.drydredgers.org/fragcrp1.htm

My Fossil Artwork on a Commercial Product

I guess I should feel flattered that an Internet fossil dealer put an image I created on one of the fossils they sell. On October 30, 2009, I posted about Scolecondonts in which I tried to draw an image of what one of these extinct creatures might look like. My first drawing was something out of science fiction. A reader let me know that the image I wanted was more like a modern day clam or sand worm so I created the image above for that earlier posting.

Recently,  I was checking out fossils on the indiana9fossils.com (note site name is changing in January 2018 to Prehistoric Fossils) in the Invertbrate Fossil Worm section and saw my image on the packaging for a scolecodont fossil they are trying to sell for $35.

It is too bad in that the image I created in my opinion made the jaws too big in relation to the body. See this recent post on sand worms. I am tempted to create a new image but on based on a bobbit worm as a scolecodont.

My feelings are mixed about the use of this image: glad that it was good enough to be used on a commercial product but I should have been asked about using this image beforehand. From what it appears to me, the person creating labels for the fossils for sale is using an Internet image search engine to find picture/drawings and then copying them onto the labels. Sadly, the other worm fossil they were showing as of 12/21/2017 was a cornulites but the image used on the label is of a conularia (which I think has little relation to worms).