Trilobites, ubiquitous Paleozoic arthropods as collaged linocut prints

 

Trilobite: Cheirurus ingricus prints Ele Willoughby, 2020

Trilobite: Cheirurus ingricus prints Ele Willoughby, 2020

My latest Paleozoic print once again takes advantage of a segmented fossil body to add colour and pattern with collaged Japanese washi papers. This member of the ubiquitous and wildly successful trilobites, prehistoric creatures which lived for hundreds of millions of years, was a Cheirurus ingricus which lived during the Late Cambrian through the Early Devonian era.

Cheirurus lived from about 500 million years ago to 390 million years ago. Trilobites were arthropods (as are modern day insects, lobsters, shrimp and more) which left fossils of their exoskeletons worldwide. There are many thousands of different species and their fossils have been important  to biostratigraphy, paleontology, evolutionary biology, and plate tectonics. It was hard to choose which one to portray as there are tens of thousands of different species of these critters, but I thought they were well suited to collaged segments.

More Animal Prints and Imaginary Friends of Science

I haven't kept up with my own prints during this weird time, so today I'm going to share a bunch of recent prints!

Adélie Penguins linocut by Ele Willoughby

Orca linocut by Ele Willoughby

Black Bear linocut by Ele Willoughby

Beaver linocut by Ele Willoughby

Moose linocut by Ele Willoughby

 

 

Yeti crab linocut by Ele Willoughby

Rosy Maple Moth linocut by Ele Willoughby

Occam's Razor linocut by Ele Willoughby

That last one probably needs some explantions. This print "Occam's Razor" is about the Law of Economy or Parsimony postulated by Scholastic philosopher William of Ockham (1287–1347), "pluralitas non est ponenda sine necessitate" or entities should not be needlessly multiplied. More simply this law, or really, rule of thumb is that the simplest explanation is usually right. The print should Ockham himself, inspired by an image of him from a stained glass window in Surrey, the proverbial razor and many unlikely things (aliens, ghosts, cryptozoological creatures) it would cut away.

 This is my most recent "Imaginary Friend" of science, along with demons (Maxwell's, Descartes' and Laplace's), Schroedinger's cat, and the Spherical Cow. If you have another charismatic thought-experiment/imaginary friend of science to suggest, please let me know!