Trilobites are a well-known fossil group of extinct

Extinction

In biology and ecology, extinction is the end of an organism or of a group of organisms , normally a species. The moment of extinction is generally considered to be the death of the last individual of the species, although the capacity to breed and recover may have been lost before this point...

 marine arthropod

Arthropod

An arthropod is an invertebrate animal having an exoskeleton , a segmented body, and jointed appendages. Arthropods are members of the phylum Arthropoda , and include the insects, arachnids, crustaceans, and others...

s that form the class

Class (biology)

In biological classification, class is* a taxonomic rank. Other well-known ranks are life, domain, kingdom, phylum, order, family, genus, and species, with class fitting between phylum and order...

 Trilobita. The first appearance of trilobites in the fossil record defines the base of the Atdabanian stage of the Early Cambrian period , and they flourished throughout the lower Paleozoic

Paleozoic

The Paleozoic era is the earliest of three geologic eras of the Phanerozoic eon, spanning from roughly...

 era before beginning a drawn-out decline to extinction when, during the Devonian

Devonian

The Devonian is a geologic period and system of the Paleozoic Era spanning from the end of the Silurian Period, about 416.0 ± 2.8 Mya , to the beginning of the Carboniferous Period, about 359.2 ± 2.5 Mya...

, almost all trilobite orders, with the sole exception of Proetida

Proetida

Proetida is an order of trilobite that lived from the Ordovician to the Permian. It was the last order of trilobite to go extinct, finally dying out in the Permian extinction....

, died out.