Humans discovered a black gooey liquid in an Engineer temple on LV 223 and in Ridley Scott’s 2012 film Prometheus. Any organism that came into contact with the black liquid was transformed and mutated. The mutation was genetic in nature, and the host creature became extremely hostile to other organisms. It is now widely assumed that the Engineers acted as God, creating both humanity and Xenomorphs. A Trilobite was one of the monsters created as a result of the Black Liquid.
It had the appearance of a cross between an arthropod and an octopus. When an infected Dr. Holloway impregnated Elizabeth Shaw, the Trilobite was born. The thing grew at an exponential rate inside Elizabeth, and she was only able to live by having it extracted from her womb via cesarean section.
It immediately transformed as a gigantic tentacled monster after escaping her body and impregnating an Engineer with a Deacon. While there are numerous similarities between the Trilobite and the facehuggers of the Alien universe, there are a few important differences. In this video, we will look at the Trilobite, its origins, and other key questions including how it can expand in size without using any biomass.
What is The Trilobite?
In Ridley Scott’s 2012 film Prometheus, partners, and archeologists Charlie Holloway, played by Logan Marshal Green and Elizabeth Shaw, played by Noomi Rapace, discover ancient intergalactic maps known to bear resemblance with several extinct human cultures. Following the event, Peter Weyland, the CEO of Weyland Corp, sends a team of scientists and researchers to follow the maps on the ship called Prometheus for the expedition.
The team was put in stasis for the journey, and a synthetic named David, played by Micheal Fassbender was put in charge. Prometheus completes its course in 2193 and arrives on a moon named LV 223. After making its landing near a massive artificial structure, a small team from the expedition goes to explore it. Inside the structure, they find several peculiar objects, including many steatite ampules storing a highly unstable black liquid.
David infects Holloway with the liquid that he stole, unbeknownst to the latter. Later, Holloway sleeps with Shaw, infecting her. Later, Shaw gives birth to a Trilobite using a Pauling MedPod 720i in Meredith Vickers’ FTL Lifeboat. Shaw initially thought that the Trilobite was dead, but unbeknownst to her, it was only unconscious, and it later grew into a massive squid-like organism.
Although named after the prehistoric creature of the same name, the Trilobites don’t bear any physiological resemblance with their namesake. In its infant stage, the Trilobite resembled a four-armed octopus, but with time it grew into an extremely violent beast with incredibly large and powerful tentacles. Interestingly enough, it grew to this gargantuan size in very little time and without the need for any biomass intake. Shaw initially attempted to kill the creature by decontaminating the Medford.
After Meredith Vicker’s lifeboat is jettisoned on LV 223, Shaw releases the Trilobite so that it would attack the Engineer that was coming after her. By now, the Trilobite had grown large enough in size and strength to take down an Engineer. The Trilobite infected and further impregnated the Engineer, who later gave birth to a Deacon. After the impregnation, the Trilobite itself dies, much like a Facehugger. As an adult, the Trilobite looked like a mutated and enlarged Facehugger, yet the two have several differences. Facehuggers are small creatures that leap onto their victim’s face and carry out an oral impregnation.
However, the Trilobite doesn’t necessarily leap onto its victim, it rather subdues and overpowers the victim with the strong and agile tentacles, making them immobile before impregnation. After a victim is overpowered, the Trilobite places its main body on them, and at the center of this body is a huge mouth with sharp teeth.
At the center of this toothed mouth or maw lies a large feeding tube that the Trilobite uses for impregnation. Furthermore, there are several holes at the back of the Trilobite, and these are probably used for breathing or for supplying air into the host’s mouth. Once the impregnation is done, the Trilobite falls unconscious and dies. Furthermore, the host themselves fall unconscious, probably due to exhaustion and loss of energy from the ordeal.
Origin of The Trilobite
As per the film, Holloway unwittingly ingested the black liquid, and thereupon his DNA genetic structure started to change within the next 24 hours. He then had sex with Shaw and transferred his sperm with a modified genetic sequence into her. Despite the fact that Shaw was barren, she became pregnant with a Trilobite. The gestation period was abnormally quick, and the Trilobite grew rapidly inside her. Ultimately, she removed the Trilobite from her body via cesarean.
But a significant question that remains is if the black liquid transformed the genetic makeup of Holloway just because he consumed it, wouldn’t it alter Shaw’s DNA too, because she gave birth to something like a Trilobite? Also, if she hadn’t removed the infant Trilobite via surgery, would it have burst out of her body like a Facehugger?
Well, the short answer would be that no one really knows for sure. And, the long answer is that the Trilobite that Shaw gave birth to doesn’t necessarily follow the same life cycle as that of a Facehugger or a Xenomorph. Xenomorphs follow a largely asexual and parasitic form of reproduction in which a facehugger plants a chest buster inside a host, and the chest buster erupts out of the host, killing the latter in the process.
However, the Trilobite needed a womb to grow up in, and it even had an amniotic sac and amniotic cord so that it would take nourishment from the mother. As far as changing Shaw’s DNA structure is concerned, it had significantly changed because Shaw’s barren womb was made fertile.
So basically, instead of giving birth to a chest buster or a newly formed Xenomorph, Shaw gave birth to an entity that served as a facehugger. It is made evident because the Trilobite then went on to attack and impregnate the Last Engineer, from whom a Deacon came out and then matured.
So, in the case of a Trilobite and Deacon, there are two impregnations, while in the case of a Xenomorph, there’s just one impregnation. It is often argued that the Engineers were the ones who messed up scientifically with the black liquid to create bio-mechanical weapons, the result of which was the Xenomorphs.
So, it can be assumed here that the Trilobite and the Deacon were naturally formed progenitors to the commonly found Xenomorphs. Now, all Xenomorphs have a Queen who lays eggs that result in facehuggers, and by using the earlier logic, we can assume that Shaw served as the Queen who gave birth to a Trilobite, who served as the facehugger.
To sum it all up, it can be assumed that Xenomorphs are the result of careful scientific experiments with the black liquid, while the Trilobite and Deacon are the results of a more rudimentary and natural exposure to the black liquid with the human reproductive system. If you have other thoughts, let us know in the comments.
Why is it called Trilobite?
Trilobites are ancient creatures that lived in the deep sea millions of years ago and got extinct around 252 million years ago. The trilobites were essentially arthropods or invertebrate organisms with segmented bodies, like scorpions, centipedes, etc. However, one specific genus named the Micrurus Trilobite had tentacled bodies and two thick and heavy spines protruding out of their backs that resembled ram-like horns.
While the Trilobite from the film doesn’t necessarily evoke its ancient namesake, it bears a small resemblance with the Dicranurus Trilobite. It seems that the production wanted its creature to be as close to nature as possible, and hence even the Deacon doesn’t have a biomechanical outlook and looks more organic than Xenomorph drones.
So, the Trilobite from the film is basically a cross between the ancient species of arthropods and squids. Although the extinct creatures were very small, measuring up to a few inches, the one from the film grew large and muscular enough to take down an Engineer. The concept artist of Prometheus, Neville Page, didn’t do a facehugger with the Trilobite but rather served as an uber metaphor for the facehugger. Interestingly enough, the inner body of the Trilobite has six openings from which smaller tentacles emerge to bind the Engineer.
Their openings bear an uncanny resemblance with a woman’s vulva, and this imagery further alienates the Trilobite from a facehugger; it gives the Trilobite sexual imagery and makes the entire creature nothing less than a celebration of vulvas. Although the Trilobite had seven tentacles, the design didn’t make it look like a copy of an octopus, but something entirely different, and it is beyond doubt that octopuses are among the most alien-looking creatures found on Earth.
What Page did to ensure the Trilobite’s alienation from an octopus was that he made the Trilobite’s tentacles look so strong that they could practically lift the organism’s weight and help in locomotion. Furthermore, the outlook of the creature looks like it was kept in a formaldehyde solution forever. Its pale skin, its skin tone, its texture are all insipid, bland, and watery. This made the creature more memorable yet frightening.
Interestingly enough, Jon Spaihts was initially contacted to write the script for Prometheus and wished to focus primarily on a facehugger impregnating Shaw. David was to bind Shaw and release a facehugger onto her.
The facehugger wouldn’t have attacked David because he didn’t smell like a living being; he didn’t have moist breath and other similar features that living beings possess. So, he would have been able to caress a Xenomorph egg so that a facehugger came out of it. But facehuggers impregnated the host with a chest buster, and they always killed the host while erupting from the body. John Spaihts essentially gave birth to this translucent-skinned Xenomorph.
This Xenomorph was to have qualities that were straight from the paintings of Giger, but unlike other xenomorphs, it wouldn’t have had an exoskeleton and bio-mechanical physiology. However, in the final script by Damon Lindelof, the impregnation was changed to Shaw making love with Holloway. This change supported the subsequent event of Shaw extracting the Trilobite through a cesarean, which in turn gave strong reasoning to the fact that Shaw didn’t die after she removed the Trilobite from her body. In the end, the Trilobite serves as a prelude to the Deacon.
How does the “Trilobite” become so large without consuming any resources?
The rate at which the Trilobite grows during and after its gestation is abnormally accelerated and quite alien to how any Earthly creature grows. However, we have to keep in mind that it was an alien life form, and hence it is beyond the biological conventions that normal organisms follow with respect to development and growth. The Trilobite may be a physiologically simple creature, and all it needs is that its cells replicate manifolds in a short span of time to grow in size.
This cell division requires a large amount of energy, and once the rate of cell division becomes zero, organisms die of natural causes. Naturally, if an organism was to have an accelerated rate of cell division, its life span would be considered short.
As far as Xenomorphs are concerned, the bulk of their energy goes into rapid aging and development. Such is the case with a Trilobite, and it would be safe to assume that it starts off with dense volumes of stored energy at birth and expend all of its stored energy into developing at an enhanced rate.
You might be surprised to know that the Rhubarb Triangle, an area between Wakefield, Leeds, and Bradford, grows the majority of rhubarb in the world. The crop is kept in extremely dark sheds and supplied with nutrients for a couple of years. During this time, it hardly grows in size but keeps absorbing nutrients. After a while, light is added to the dark sheds, and then the rhubarb plants grow at such an exponential rate that one can hear the squeaking and popping.
It also theorized that Xenomorphs eat what their hosts eat, but they can also sustain themselves on several inorganic materials. So, come to think of it, the Trilobite could have survived on the machinery that was present in the MedPod.
Although the Alien franchise is not known for its continuity, the Trilobite was placed well into the universe. Having said that, Mr. Ridley Scott left quite a few unanswered questions that will forever confuse the minds of people and lead to unending debates.