Trilobites are a group of extinct marine arthropods that resemble modern,day horseshoe crabs and are related to modern crustaceans and insects. Just very recently paleontologists have unearthed fossils of a giant trilobite species that lived in ancient oceans of what is now Australia approx. 540 million years ago. This discovery of the Redlichia rex trilobite gave CollectA the idea to create the corresponding model figurine. The creature disappeared in the mass extinction at the end of the Permian period, about 252 million years ago.