Object Status:
Unlocated
Accession Date:
January 22, 1806
Primary Source Reference:
Peale Museum Accessions Book, Historical Society of Pennsylvania, p. 11
Notes:
The binomial designation Pediculus marinus, which suggests sea lice, was also applied to certain fossils. In the 1750s Emanuel Mendoza da Costa "confidently identified [fossil] trilobites as belonging to a 'crustaceous animal, of that kind called Pediculi marini'." James St. John, "The Earliest Trilobite Research (Antiquity to the 1820s)," in Fabulous Fossils: 300 Years of Worldwide Research on Trilobites (New Yok, 2017), p. 206
Trilobites have been found in Jersey Shore, Pa., near Lycoming Creek in central Pennsylvania. The Pennsylvania state fossil is the trilobite Phacops rana, pictured here.
The Peale Museum received several other "em>Pediculus marinus," as follows: on 27 Oct 1808 from Charles L. Smith, Jr. (found near Milton, Pa.); on 18 Oct 1815 from H. C. Sleight (from Russellville, Ky.); on 24 June 1821 from Alexander Shepherd (from Ripley, Ohio); and on 28 Aug 1821 from T. G. Connor (from New Jersey); and on 7 May 1822 from David Buckwalter (from Hampshire County, W.Va.). Accessions Book, pp. 36, 78, 114, 119; National Gazette and Literary Register (Philadelphia), 28 Aug 1821
Current Scientific Name
Trilobites
