There's a new trilobite book coming out on June 21st, 2022. It's called "Travels with Trilobites". The author is Andy Secher a prolific collector of trilobites. He lives in New York City just a few blocks from the American Museum of Natural History. He's co-editor of the AMNH's very informative trilobite website.
Trilobites were some of the most successful and versatile organisms ever to exist. Among the earliest forms of complex animal life, these hard-shelled marine invertebrates inhabited the primal seas of the Paleozoic Era. Their march through evolutionary time began in the Lower Cambrian, some 521 million years ago, and lasted until their demise at the end of the Permian, more than 250 million years later. During this vast stretch of planetary history, these adaptable animals filled virtually every available undersea niche, evolving into more than 25,000 scientifically recognized species.
In Travels with Trilobites, Andy Secher invites readers to come along in search of the fossilized remains of these ancient arthropods. He explores breathtaking paleontological hot spots around the world—including Alnif, Morocco, on the edge of the Sahara Desert; the Sakha Republic, deep in the Siberian wilderness; and Kangaroo Island, off the coast of South Australia—and offers a behind-the-scenes look at museums, fossil shows, and life on the collectors’ circuit. The book features hundreds of photographs of unique specimens drawn from Secher’s private collection, showcasing stunning fossil finds that highlight the diversity, complexity, and beauty of trilobites. Entertaining and informative, Travels with Trilobites combines key scientific information about these captivating creatures with wry, colorful observations and inside stories from one of the world’s most prolific collectors.
The Smithsonian Magazine website has a nice review of the book.
Hooked is an understatement. Fast forward to adulthood and Secher has amassed a personal collection of some 5,000 fossils, which he houses inside his 1,650-square-foot Manhattan apartment. His passion for fossils, and specifically trilobites—extinct hard-shelled marine invertebrates that existed during the Paleozoic Era, a time period that stretched around 289 million years—led him to a career as a field associate in paleontology at the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH). There, for the past 15 years, he has been co-editor of the museum’s popular Trilobite website.
“I often joke that I have the largest trilobite collection on the Upper West Side,” Secher says. (The fact that the world-renowned museum, with its thousands of specimens, is less than a half-mile walk from his apartment makes the quip all the more humorous.)
So, what is it about trilobites that make them different from other fossils? For Secher, the answer is simple. In his book he writes, “Even at a very early stage in the history of life on our planet, the trilobite design had already proven to possess a certain degree of evolutionary perfection.” Add to that the fact that there’s such a variety of specimens out there, resembling everything from what he describes as a “hydrodynamic spaceship” to “nothing more than a primordial meatloaf,” and it’s easy to see why collectors like Secher are thirsty for trilobites.
More recently, Secher added another bullet point to his résumé with the release of his book Travels with Trilobites: Adventures in the Paleozoic, which takes readers on a journey to some of the best places around the world to see these ancient arthropods, from museum collections to quarry fossil beds.
