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5 Cents - Elizabeth II Trilobita
| Issuer | Niue |
|---|---|
| Year | 2021 |
| Type | Collector coin |
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| Composition | Log in to see details |
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|---|---|
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| Reverse description | A richly colored, photorealistic depiction of a trilobite fossil occupies the central field, rendered in warm earth tones of brown and grey and presented in a naturalistic, embedded-in-rock composition. The specimen is shown in full dorsal view with clearly articulated segmentation, pleural lobes, and cephalic shield. The inscription TRILOBITA appears in the upper field and MUONIONALUSTA in the lower field, both incused against the metallic meteorite surface. A cartouche in the lower right bearing the legend .999 METEORITE confirms the exotic composition of the planchet. |
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| Reverse lettering | TRILOBITA MUONIONALUSTA .999 METEORITE |
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| Additional information |
The Muonionalusta meteorite fell in northern Sweden roughly one million years ago and was first recovered near the Muonio River in 1906. It is a fine octahedrite, and when sliced and etched, its iron-nickel structure produces the Widmanstätten pattern — a crystalline geometry that takes anywhere from 10,000 to 1,000,000 years to form and cannot be replicated artificially. Each coin in this series is struck from an authenticated slice of that material, meaning no two pieces are identical in surface character.
Niue has issued meteorite-composition coinage under licensing arrangements that allow it to function as a legal tender vehicle for novelty scientific material. The trilobite series pairs the meteorite substrate with fossil imagery — organisms that went extinct roughly 252 million years ago, predating the meteorite's own terrestrial arrival by a considerable margin.