The article is about a new discovery of a fossilized trilobite with a full stomach, which reveals what it ate and how it digested its food.
Trilobites are extinct marine arthropods that lived from the Cambrian to the Permian periods, about 521 to 252 million years ago. They were very diverse and abundant, but their feeding habits are poorly understood.
The fossil was found in Morocco and belongs to a species called Redlichia rex, which was one of the largest and most predatory trilobites. It had a length of about 30 cm and a pair of large spines on its head.
The fossil shows that the trilobite had a stomach filled with shelly fragments of other trilobites and smaller crustaceans. This suggests that it was a scavenger or an opportunistic predator that fed on dead or injured animals.
The fossil also reveals that the trilobite had a simple digestive system that consisted of a foregut and a midgut. The foregut was a muscular tube that crushed the food and passed it to the midgut, where digestion and absorption took place. The midgut was a long and narrow chamber that ran along the body axis and had no branches or diverticula.
The fossil provides the first direct evidence of the diet and digestion of trilobites, which can help us understand their ecology and evolution. It also shows that trilobites had a similar digestive system to modern arthropods, indicating a conserved trait among this group.
Article summary by bing ai:
The fossil shows that the trilobite had a stomach filled with shelly fragments of other trilobites and smaller crustaceans. This suggests that it was a scavenger or an opportunistic predator that fed on dead or injured animals.