TRILOBITES of Black Cat Mountain
www.BlackCatMountain.com George P. Hansen
The Author

George P. Hansen, author of Trilobites of Black Cat Mountain
has a PhD in chemical physics from Rice University. His lifetime hobby has been geology and paleontology, collecting fossils and reading both popular and professional literature from these fields. He has spent over 15 years studying and collecting the fossils of Black Cat Mountain and over 5 years writing the book. Here he sits photographing and inspecting fossils preserved in the solidified Devonian seafloor, now compacted into limestone.
Below is a photograph of skeletal debris taken directly on the surface of a quarry floor in the Haragan formation at Black Cat Mountain. "A" is a nearly complete, enrolled phacopid; "B" is part of the tail of a dalmanitid, flipped upside down; "C" is the free cheek from a Kettneraspis; and "D" is a brachiopod.
The next image below is another Paciphacops species whose exoskeletal components were separated from one another after the animal "shed its skin," a process known as ecdesis or exuviation.  The red arrows indicate the three major parts of the cuticle; the blue arrow points to an eye, which is partially peeking above the rock surface at the bottom of the image.