Trilobite Conga Lines

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 Trilobite Conga Lines



    The trilobites were ancient Cambrian arthropods. Their fossils can be found worldwide due to how abundant they were before they went extinct. They thrived from the Cambrian Explosion, where life rapidly evolved to the Devonian era.

    Trilobites were one of the most successful early animals, existing for almost 300 million years. The trilobites went extinct around 250 million years ago in the end-Permian extinction. There were many different types of trilobites spanning their 300 million year reign. Different trilobites had different lifestyles, as it is thought that some moved over the seabeds as predators, and others were filter-feeders and scavengers. Most trilobites swam and crawled for transportation, but it is thought that some could have crawled on land. Some even believe it's possible that some species of trilobites moved in herds that looked like conga lines.


Trilobite Herds


    As stated before, trilobites were a diverse animal genus, with hundreds of different species. These different species had different ways of transportation over the vast oceans. One specific species, Ampyx priscus, lived 480 million years ago in modern-day France and Morocco. Recently, a fossil plate was uncovered showing multiple Ampyx priscus in a "conga line" pictured below.




    Trilobites lacked sophisticated eyes and nervous systems, but their long, spine-like appendages could have let them communicate through chemical signals, or by touch. The chemical signals could have alerted nearby trilobites of the same species to file into a conga line or to mate. Its thought that traveling in these conga lines were a smart strategy, as it minimized the amount of drag the followers experienced from underwater currents, ultimately saving them energy. 

    As shown in the picture above, there isn't a specific order in which the trilobites are lined up in. The conga lines do not seem to have any order, such as smaller to larger, or larger to smaller trilobites in a given location in the line. This could be due to how complicated it would be to sort the trilobites based on size, or just because they didn't even know about orders. It's probable that younger trilobites of this species didn't join in on the lines because they were not mature enough to migrate. This could also mean that Ampyx priscus of different ages would travel in their own conga lines, eventually graduating to the lines you see in the fossils above, but no fossils of smaller Ampyx priscus conga lines have been found yet so this remains a theory.


    This spotlight was inspired by Hugh Trenchard, Carlton Brett, and Matjaž Perc's paper titled "Trilobite "pelotons": Possible hydrodynamic drag effects between leading and following trilobites in trilobite queues."  It's a very interesting read, and you can find the full article here:

    https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Trilobite-%E2%80%98pelotons%E2%80%99%3A-possible-hydrodynamic-drag-in-Trenchard-Brett/d7bc169db3fe49f89b21dff71b6632d6a3f6629a 

    (Copy the link and paste into google, then click on the button saying "view pdf on arXiv" on the page below the text)














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