What Climate do trilobites live in?

Question

Im doing a science project on trilobites. Ive looked on many sites, but I just can't seem to find the answer.

Answer 1

They were all over the place in the sea.  For fun, I've just started translating an old German article on the things, but it'll be a while until I'm ready to upload it.  Part of a paragraph of this presently unavailable thing is a short, unproof-read summary.  There's an archaic German word involved that'd be best avoided.  'Algonkium' was sometimes used for the Proterozoic:

"In any case, one finds the first record of the strong radiation of trilobites with the first undoubted appearance in the Lower Cambrian, and that allows it to be concluded that their forerunners existed during the Algonkium.  The numbers of species and individuals quickly increased during the Cambrian, and from their number arose trilobites that ruled the seas.  The high point of their variety was reached during the Lower Silurian but soon, already from the Upper Silurian, they were increasingly pushed into the background by the radiations of caphalopods and brachiopods.  Only a few genera occur in large numbers during the Devonian and Carboniferous, but it is during the Permian that the final representative of their once proud group had to clear the field; they disappeared and do not seem to have lived on in descendant animal forms."

That effectively means they weren't collectively too bothered about climate.  Some presumably preferred tropical conditions while others didn't.  Therefore, asking about which climate isn't a very good question, and that could explain your difficulties with finding a single, all-embracing answer.  There isn't one.

Answer 2

Well, you got most the answers up there... but most were benthonic - they lived on the sea bed and were filter feeders.

Answer 3

You say you can't find the answer? That is amazing, I entered "trilobites" in the magic little search box on top of this page and presto, a lot of very good web sites came up.

Answer 4

'did' live in. (They are now extinct, or they did 250million years ago :))

They lived in marine environments.

We know this thanks to preservation of soft tissues found on some trilobite fossils.

The same fossils are also found in freshwater environments, suggesting that some freshwater trilobites existed among saltwater trilobites!