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Trilobites Don't Bug Me At All!

"But ask now the beasts, and they shall teach thee; and the fowls of the air, and they shall teach thee: Or speak to the earth, and it shall teach thee: and the fishes of the sea shall declare unto thee." Job 12:8

From age 6 on besides school, my spare time was spent being involved at the church (Lutheran) as an Acolyte, Cub, then Boy Scouts, or out on my own in a local woods or stream since I found nature fascinating.
On my 13th birthday, being a serious and precocious boy, I randomly opened my Bible and stuck my finger randomly in it and read the above verse which was the beginning of my studies in biology and geology. Because the rocks in the area of my birth and youth were of ancient marine coral reefs, that became the primary field of my interest and study (although my Irish & Scot grandmothers has also taught me much herbalism which I've always muddled with).
Of all the fossil creatures I began to find on my hikes, the most elusive of all were trilobites, that extinct arthropod relative to the horseshoe crabs. For four years I would only find a few fragments of them, usually of their moulted exoskeleton tail, occassionally a head part, sometimes the middle. Finally, in the summer of my 18th year, I found a perfect enrolled specimen on a family camping trip near Cincinnati. That fall in my first field trip in a geology class in north west Ohio at Bowling Green University, I would find a baggy full of fragments and a perfect enrolled and, rarest of all, a perfect outstretched specimen of Phacops rana milleri (which was recently renamed Eldredgeops milleri). Although I would still maintain a very active interest in the entire marine ecosystem, along with a bit of paleobotany, fresh water and terrestial animals, my primary focus over the years has been collecting trilobites, although my mid through late 20's is when my academic focus was on art and philosophy.
Hopefully, beginning 2014 I can devote more time in collecting both general marine and specifically trilobites once I start my river adventure.
Posting here a discussion of the little beasties and a sampling of the complete ones in my collection, which number about 350 species of complete specimens, and another 700 species of partial specimens.
Introduction is a bit technical although as simplified as I could make it, in matters of my critters I am most surely a boffin.

For Rachel Victoria H. and her Extatosoma tiaratum: may they never have to go through parthenogenesis again!

(Diorama scene of ancient ocean floor)