Trilobites Museum fossil collection

Geossítio 25 Trilobites Museum fossil collection

The Museum of Giant Trilobites!

Since the middle of the 20th century, slates have been extracted from the fossiliferous quarry popularly known as the “Pedreira do Valério”, for processing and later use in construction.

As a result of the quarrying, an important fauna of fossil invertebrates has been discovered, including trilobites, bivalves, gastropods and other fossils. The museum’s collection includes trilobites, now extinct creatures that inhabited the ocean bordering the southern margin of the Gondwana paleocontinent around 465 million years ago (Darriwilian – Middle Ordovician).

The Trilobites Museum was inaugurated on July 1, 2006 and brings together some of the most remarkable fossil specimens found during the working of the slate quarry – a unique example of cooperation between industry and science. This is a geosite of international importance in the UNESCO World Geopark of Arouca, which was also distinguished by the International Union of Geological Sciences (IUGS) in 2022 as one of the top 100 most important sites in the world due to its scientific relevance.

This geosite is part of the Iter Hominis Vale do Paiva trail.

Este geossítio faz parte do itinerário C: Paiva, the surprising valley.
Saiba mais sobre a Rota dos Geossítios .

Informação Geológica

The mining of the Valério quarry allowed for the discovery and scientific study of an important fauna of fossil invertebrates, consisting of trilobites, bivalves, rostroconchs, gastropods, cephalopods, brachiopods, echinoderms, hyolithids, conularia, ostracods, graptolites and ichnofossils. Interpreted by the first workers as “animals from the time of the flood”, the paleontological record of the trilobites found is important not only because of the gigantism reached by many species (the largest in the world), but also because of their state of preservation. In this sense, the environmental conditions of the time favored the preservation of carapace seedlings, along with complete corpses of some trilobite species, so that many of these fossils complete the knowledge of some of these fossil animals. The greatest contribution of this deposit to the biology of trilobites is the discovery of mono- and multi-species associations of these fossils. The concentration in small spaces of groups of individuals at a similar ontogenic stage has been interpreted here as indicative of the gregarious behavior achieved by many trilobites during shell moulting or reproduction.