''Balnibarbi'' is an

extinct Extinction is the termination of an organism by the death of its Endling, last member. A taxon may become Functional extinction, functionally extinct before the death of its last member if it loses the capacity to Reproduction, reproduce and ...

genus Genus (; : genera ) is a taxonomic rank above species and below family (taxonomy), family as used in the biological classification of extant taxon, living and fossil organisms as well as Virus classification#ICTV classification, viruses. In bino ...

trilobite Trilobites (; meaning "three-lobed entities") are extinction, extinct marine arthropods that form the class (biology), class Trilobita. One of the earliest groups of arthropods to appear in the fossil record, trilobites were among the most succ ...

s in the family

Olenidae Olenidae is a family of ptychopariida, ptychopariid trilobites. Some genera, ''Balnibarbi (trilobite), Balnibarbi'' and ''Cloacaspis'', are thought to have evolved a symbiosis, symbiotic relationship with sulfur-eating bacteria from which they de ...

. They are known from

fossil A fossil (from Classical Latin , ) is any preserved remains, impression, or trace of any once-living thing from a past geological age. Examples include bones, shells, exoskeletons, stone imprints of animals or microbes, objects preserve ...

s excavated in

Norway Norway, officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic countries, Nordic country located on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. The remote Arctic island of Jan Mayen and the archipelago of Svalbard also form part of the Kingdom of ...

. They lived during the early part of the Arenig stage of the

Ordovician Period The Ordovician ( ) is a geologic period and system, the second of six periods of the Paleozoic Era, and the second of twelve periods of the Phanerozoic Eon. The Ordovician spans 41.6 million years from the end of the Cambrian Period Ma (mill ...

, a

faunal stage In chronostratigraphy, a stage is a succession of rock strata laid down in a single age on the geologic timescale, which usually represents millions of years of deposition. A given stage of rock and the corresponding age of time will by conven ...

that occurred about 479 to 472 million years ago.''Balnibarbi''.
Fossilworks. The genus is ancestral to, and co-existed sympatrically with, the better-known '' Cloacaspis''. Fortey, R. A. 1974
The Ordovician trilobites of Spitsbergen. I. Olenidae.
Norsk Polarinstitutt Skrifter 160, 1-129. It was named for the fictional country of Balnibarbi featured in ''

Gulliver's Travels ''Gulliver's Travels'', originally titled ''Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World. In Four Parts. By Lemuel Gulliver, First a Surgeon, and then a Captain of Several Ships'', is a 1726 prose satire by the Anglo-Irish writer and clerg ...

'', a place "populated by eccentric natural philosophers." Species include: *'' Balnibarbi ceryx'' *'' Balnibarbi erugata'' *'' Balnibarbi pulvurea'' *'' Balnibarbi scimitar'' *'' Balnibarbi sombrero'' *'' Balnibarbi tholia''

References

Early Ordovician trilobites of Europe Fossils of Norway Olenina Ptychopariida genera {{ptychopariida-stub