Drotops armatus
Drotops is a genus of trilobites from the order Phacopida, family Phacopidae that lived during the Eifelian of the Middle Devonian. It was described by Struve in 1990 under type species Drotops megalomanicus. Their fossils are found in present-day Morocco, specifically the Maïder Region located South West of Erfoud.

Daderot · CC0 · via Wikipedia/Commons. May be a photograph of a specimen, or an artist’s reconstruction — an interpretation of a skeleton, since colour and soft tissue are almost never preserved.
On record
Recorded, not inferred- Sits inside
- DrotopsPBDB
- Diet
- carnivorePBDB, for Phacopina
- Life habit
- low-level epifaunalPBDB, for Trilobita
- Motility
- fast-movingPBDB, for Trilobita
- Vision
- well-developedPBDB, for Phacopidae
- Environment
- marinePBDB, for Trilobita
Time the record covers
At most 2.6 million years on record.
The one occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 390.5 Mya and 387.95 Mya, which is a dating window rather than a span.
1 occurrence of Drotops armatus on record, most of them in the Devonian. Bar height is expected occurrences, not a count: each fossil is spread across the span it is dated to, so a tall narrow bar means tight dating and a low wide one means loose.
When
1 occurrences- Devonian100%
These are dates about fossils, not the animal: the record can only begin after it arose and end before it died out, so either end may reach further. Shares are expected occurrences: a fossil dated to a span is counted partly in each period it straddles. More on what this infers.
Found in
1 formation
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The named rock units Drotops armatus has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed.
Drotops armatus and its relatives
DevonianWhere Drotops armatus and its relatives were recorded in the Devonian.
Found in the same rock
11 taxa- Anopliidae1 site
- Atrypa (Planatrypa)1 site
- Beckmannia1 site
- Bifida1 site
- Cyberella lemkei1 site
- Davidsonia verneuillii1 site
- Hypsipariops vagabundus1 site
- Quadrithyris1 site
- Skenidioides1 site
- Spinocyrtia1 site
- Xystostrophia1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 1 site for Drotops armatus, and this reads all of them. The number is how many of those sites it was catalogued from too.
This is not a list of everything alive at the time. It is only what has come out of the same ground as this animal and been written down.
Entered from
1 referenceEach of the 1 occurrence read was entered from one of these publications, ordered by how many each accounts for. This is not a search for papers mentioning the name. Each entry links to doi.org. Relayed as the Paleobiology Database holds them, not checked against what they resolve to.
Media and terms
Media content1
Picture of Drotops armatus
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Daderot
- Licence
- CC0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Drotops armatus was found in MorphoSource and Sketchfab.
Smithsonian Open Access was not reached for this taxon, so this list is what the others held rather than everything there is.
The description on this site
- Source
- Wikipedia, “Drotops”
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
This is what the site found, which is not the same as what exists.
Keep going
What may have been alongside itDrotops through timeFormations of the DevonianThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Struve 1990