Echinoderms such as starfish are unusual for their five-fold body symmetry. Maps of gene-expression patterns show how this body plan was acquired, and that the genes specifying head structures do ...

The recent Invertebrate Wars reminded me of spectacular, but often ignored, group of gastropods. The parasites! This is a group that I have totally geeked out on in the past. In my previous work I ...

Zamora S, Rahman IA. 2014. Deciphering the early evolution of echinoderms with Cambrian fossils. Palaeontology 57: 1105–1119. Smith AB, Zamora S, Álvaro JJ. 2013. The oldest echinoderm faunas from ...

Scientists are retracing the journeys of century-old Antarctic expeditions to discover how the Earth has changed.

Mollusks get both larger and smaller than all the Echinoderms and they are more diverse both in terms of number of species and the ecological niches they fill. If you don’t believe me that Mollusks ...

The Extraxial/Axial Theory (EAT) of echinoderm skeletal homologies describes two major body wall types: axial and extraxial. The latter is subdivided into perforate and imperforate regions. Each of ...

The evolution of the sea star, sea urchin, and other echinoderms’ body shape during the Cambrian and Ordovician periods was faster and more dramatic than their ecological innovation, according ...

- they lack a hard endoskeleton unlike other echinoderms. - tube feet have been modified into tentacles around mouth which aid in feeding. - 5 rows of tubercles run from mouth to anus indicate ...

Fossil echinoderms, including the common Cambrian and Ordovician echinoderms figured here (Fig. 1 from Deline, et al., 2021; request permission to use here) have a rich and diverse fossil record ...

Therefore, their systematic positions have been represented by two hypotheses (H): as stem taxa to echinoderms (H1) or as stem taxa to chordates (H2). These conclusions rest on previous inability to ...

This triumph in deeply rooted growth is announced in the echinoderms; I wonder what Fibonacci would ascertain with a sand dollar in hand. (Please, readers, correct the number if not correct.) ...