IFL SCIENCE - The humble trilobite may be long-extinct, but even as fossils, there’s much they can teach us about the history of our planet. In fact, ancient arthropods – including 10 newly discovered species – that lived nearly half a billion years ago could provide the missing pieces to the puzzle of where Thailand fitted in the ancient supercontinent of Gondwana.
The fossils were discovered in a little-studied region of Thailand, Ko Tarutao, in a green layer of rock called a tuff – coincidentally, this type of rock is, in fact, tough. It’s formed when ash from volcanic eruptions settles on the seafloor and is gradually compressed into solid rock.
They discovered that the trilobites dated back to around 490 million years ago, during the late Cambrian period, making the tuff a rare find. “Not many places around the world have this. It is one of the worst dated intervals of time in Earth’s history,” said co-author Nigel Hughes in a statement.