Travels with Trilobites. Adventures in the paleozoic / Путешествуем с трилобитами. Приключения в палеозое

Fossils are our planet's memory, and they stick hard in our memories. Those people who are lucky enough to have found fossils often remember their first fossil for life. Leaving dinosaurs aside for the moment, two types of fossils seem to appeal more than others: ammonites and trilobites. Both are extinct, diverse, and beautiful; both are poster children for extinction; and both have fans who devote their lives to collecting them. Andy Secher has one of the most extreme cases of trilobite-o-philia ever documented. I met Andy about 30 years ago when his disease was already well-advanced. As a paleontologist who knows from personal experience what it means to love fossils, I recognized Andy as a kindred spirit and was delighted to get to know him.
Over the last three decades, I have watched the world of trilobites expand as new sites are discovered, classic sites are rediscovered, more aggressive forms of excavation are deployed, and most important, the craft of fossil preparation is pushed to new levels. The widespread use of air-scribes, needles, and intense patience has revealed the world of three-dimensional trilobites, and there seems to be no end to the possibilities as spines, eyes, and other exquisite body parts are revealed after hundreds of millions of years of entombment. <...>