Trilobites have been my favorite fossils for as long as I can remember and they are probably my favorite because they look like scarabs ππͺπππ£πͺ! Everything always comes back to ancient Egypt ππ ππ for me! While trilobites and the dung beetle (the real animal that scarabs π£π£π£ were inspired by) look similar to each other, they do not have many similarities besides that – they were never even on Earth at the same time!
Trilobites first evolved during the Cambrian Period around 521 million years ago (mya) . They are classified as an arthropod which means that they have an exoskeleton, and that exoskeleton is what allowed them to fossilize so well. Trilobites lived at the bottom of seas and crawled around scavenging for food! There are over 20,000 different species of trilobites that have been discovered, and they were a very abundant species until they went extinct around 252 mya at the end of the Permian Period – right before the evolution of the dinosaurs.
While trilobites have no religious significance in ancient Egypt ππ ππ, the scarab π£ does! The scarab ππͺπππ£ is the personification is the god πΉ Khepri π£πππ. Khepri π£πππ was considered to be the god πΉ of the morning/rising sun π³πΊ, and was usually depicted as a scarab ππͺπππ£, or as a human body with a scarab π£ for a head πΆπΊ!
The god πΉ Khepri π£πππ symbolizes the βlife cycleβ – birth π, death π ππ±, and then rebirth ππΏπ ± in the afterlife πΌπΏππ. This cycle was essential to Egyptian religious beliefs, as Egyptians πππππͺ spent their lives preparing for death π ππ± and entering the Duat πΌπΏππ.
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