I hope this is the right forum for this
Tbh I don't know shit about beetles, but trilobites are arthopods, so I guess this could work.

I think this beetle would work best as an November Event Beetle, since we have a lot of prehistoric stuff for this event.


My Idea on how to get these
The November event is highly focused on exploring, so maybe an encounter could be added, where you lure a beetle out of a pond or ocean shore with one or two random herbs (these should be randomized from any herbs that you can get from this event) and if you succeed, you get a random Event Beetle Token (if there will be more than one species available).

Or...
...make them craftable (during November only)
...add them as a rare Shaman quest drop
...add them as a Whisper reward

...buuuut thats probably up to the devs.


Species
Trilobites were an extremely diverse group, it would be insane to post all species here, so here a few species from africa (morocco to be exact). Some look very funky, some not so much. But I think there's one for every taste!

All links lead to an extern site, called mineralienatlas.de, a german site about anything geological. My dumbass self copied all the links in german, I might fix that later. For now you'll have to klick the american/english flag symbol on the top left site if you want to enjoy the site in english. But theres not much to read there, but some trilobites have more than 1 image to look at.

IMPORTANT: Even if not preserved, antennaes are suspected in most trilobite species!

Colors & Patterns?
Everyone who is a little bit into palaeontology probably knows how rare specimens with preserved color pigments or patterns are. So we barely know what extinct animals actually looked like.

Trilobites shared an ecosystem with larger predators, so we may think they maybe had a more natural color palette for camouflage reasons. But even natural colors can range from brown to yellow to red to a light tan. On the other hand it's also not uncommon for males of any species to have flashy colors to woo some ladies.

Anyway, there's a study from Schoenemann et. al. (2014, The Open Geology Journal; link to the .pdf if you're interested) that covers this question a little bit.

The first specimen Eldredgeops crassituberculata had a 'dark brown shadowy pattern on the glabella' (= middle part of the head), a 'Spotted pattern on the pleurae' (= the rib-like structures to the left and right of the body) as well as a 'brown transverse band on the axial rings' (= the rib-like structures in the center of the body).


Other specimens (Scutellum geesense & Thysanopeltella acanthopeltis) showed a banded coloration of the pygidia (= the butt) or a darker 'plateau' forming at the beginning of the pygidia (Calycoscutellum sp.)




This Trilobite for example also shows some sort of pattern, but it is unknown if it's the true pattern of the animal or the internal muscle attachments. (But I think it still looks neat, so I just show it anyways as a possible pattern idea). Source: AMNH