Phacops
Phacops was a trilobite, a sea creature with a hard shell that lived long before the dinosaurs. It had a round, bumpy head and two big eyes made of many separate little lenses. When danger came, it rolled itself up into a tight ball, like a woodlouse does today.
When did it live?
How fast is it?
Fun facts
Its body was split into a head shield, a middle part with 11 sections, and a tail shield.
It had a special groove so its tail could lock tightly onto its head when it rolled up.
Many Phacops fossils are found rolled up into balls.
Some fossils have black spots on them. Scientists think it might have changed these spots to hide, a bit like an octopus.
Its shell was covered in little bumps.
Most asked questions about Phacops
?What was Phacops?
It was a trilobite, an old sea animal with a hard shell, related to today's insects, spiders and crabs.
?When did Phacops live?
From the late Ordovician until the end of the Devonian period, roughly 458 to 359 million years ago.
?Why did Phacops roll up?
Rolling into a ball protected its soft underside from enemies.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Phacops
- Group
- Prehistoric giants
- Family
- Phacopidae
- Classification
- Trilobita > Phacopida > Phacopidae
Where the facts come from
- Phacops (Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0): what it looks like, where it lives, what it eats, sizes and fun facts, retold in simple words.
- Picture by RealGatba. CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons. The round sticker of this bug is cut from the same picture.
If we got something wrong, sorry, we are bug fans, not a science journal. Tell us at [email protected] and we will fix it.
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