The humble trilobite looks like an ancient creature wearing a helmet. Hundreds of millions of years ago, they swam in the ocean, but they hide an unusual secret - they have a rare "super compound eye" in the animal world At present, through careful analysis of X-ray images, modern scientists have found that some trilobite species have "super compound eyes", equipped with hundreds of lenses. Their neural networks process and send signals, and have multiple optical nerve channels. The latest research report was published in the journal Science report published last year.
Today's arthropods, such as dragonflies and mantis shrimp, are also famous for their powerful compound eyes. Their eyes are composed of numerous "small eyes", each of which has a lens, just like a disco ball.
According to the latest archaeological findings, the ancient Trilobites from the species and genera of Trichinella have even larger and more complex compound eyes than the relatives of modern arthropods. Each eye (left eye and right eye) of them has hundreds of lenses with a diameter of nearly 1mm, which is thousands of times that of modern arthropod compound eyes. Just like the bulb of a car headlight, its lens is a hexahedral structure, so each eye of the eye bug is a super compound eye, and each compound eye has more than 200 lenses.
It is reported that trilobites are marine organisms from the Early Cambrian to the Late Permian. They may prey on marine worms, but they may be more inclined to swallow decaying marine corpses or plankton. Regrettably, these trilobite species have long disappeared. They died out at the end of the Devonian period 358million years ago. At that time, about three quarters of the earth's species were extinct. It is certain that their extinction was not due to the adaptive eyes.