Richard Fortey fell in love with trilobites when he held his first fossil and weighed up half a billion years' of history in his hands. He was fourteen. Trilobite! is an unashamedly trilobito-centric view of the world, unravelling the history of the exotic, crustacean-like animals which dominated the seas for three hundred million years. These arthropods witnessed continents move, mountain chains elevated and eroded; they survived ice ages and volcanic eruptions, evolving and adapting exquisitely to their environment. They watched through crystal eyes whilst life evolved. Their own evolution calibrated geological time itself." "Central to Fortey's book is the notion of science as a web of knowledge where the apparently peripheral can suddenly become pivotal. Trilobites have taken centre stage in scientific debates in unexpected ways.