Irena Jancarikova & Ivo Chlupac
Charles University, Prague

The Museum of Bohemian Karst in the town of Beroun southwest of Prague (Barrandian area, Czech Republic) possesses in its ethnographical collections two gingerbread molds in the form of trilobites. The first mold (Figure 1) is made of nut wood, measuring 22 by 11 cm. It represents a precisely cut exoskeleton of the Lower Devonian trilobite Odontochile rugosa Hawle and Corda, 1847. The carved image corresponds closely to actual specimens -- only the pygidial border is lacking. The second mold (Figure 2) is made of lime wood, measuring 16.5 by 8.5 cm. It was probably also based on an exoskeleton of Odontochile, but the model appears to have been a counterfeit specimen made by assembling a retouched cephalon and an incomplete thorax and pygidium. Such counterfeits were commonly produced by quarrymen in the Beroun district during the last decade of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century and sold to gullible private collectors who were largely interested in complete specimens.

These two wooden trilobite gingerbread molds are true rarities. They exemplify the deep-rooted tradition of trilobite collecting in the Barrandian area -- a tradition here seen to extend into everyday objects in the life of the local people.

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The Living Falkland Trilobite

Rolf Ludvigsen

Jacob Green, M.D., Professor of Chemistry at Jefferson Medical College, was one of the first North American scientists to describe trilobites. In addition to establishing many new genera (among them Cryptolithus, Dipleura, Ceraurus and Triarthus), his small volume published in 1832 included interesting assessments of previous work on trilobites and discussion on how they should be classified. It ended with a short chapter entitled "Nature of the Trilobite" which included the following statement (p. 92):

"It was our original intention to have closed this monograph with a short history
of these theories [that is, are trilobites Mollusca or are they allied with Limulus]
and the notion advanced by Latreille and others, that the Trilobites have been
annihilated by some ancient revolution of our planet. All these matters, we
think, are now put to rest by the late discovery of some living Trilobites in the
southern seas, near the Falkland Islands".

Green noted that the living Falkland trilobite has the appearance of Paradoxides (that is, Arctinurus) boltoni and eyes similar to those of Calymene (that is, Phacops) bufo, but he was reluctant to mention other features because, "It will probably be described and figured shortly, in a perfectly full and satisfactory manner, by Dr. James Eights, the enterprising discoverer".

When I first read this section in Green’s monograph many years ago, I had well-intentioned plans to track down Eights’ paper (if indeed it had ever been published) to find out the identify of this living trilobites but, of course, other things intervened. So recently when I was leafing through Levi-Setti’s "Trilobites" (Second Edition), I was delighted to run across James Eights’ name again. Levi-Setti included not only a reference to Eights’ 1833 paper, but also a photograph of the living Falkland trilobite -- the trilobite-like isopod crustacean Serolis trilobitoides (Eights).

Eights, J. 1833. Description of a new Crustaceous animal found on the shores of the South Shetland Islands. Transactions of the Albany Institute, vol. 2, p. 53-57.

Green, J. 1832. A monograph on the trilobites of North America with coloured models of the species. Joseph Brano, Philadelphia, 93 p.