The diversity of larval forms in marine invertebrates has long fuelled discussion on evolutionary origins of novel features and pathways of evolutionary change. Most phyla of animals are marine, and ...

A 500-million-year-old fossil from Morocco, discovered by Natural History Museum scientists, is offering extraordinary new insights into one of evolution's most puzzling transformations: how ...

The earliest fossil echinoderms have, until now, come almost exclusively from North America and are represented by few taxa, all of which have a radiate body plan. Here we report the discovery of two ...

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 to a ...

The impact on levels of carbon dioxide in the Earth's atmosphere by the decaying remains of a group of marine creatures that includes starfish and sea urchin has been significantly underestimated. The ...

How the echinoderm larval skeleton is used for support of larval arms, passive orientation, and swimming was examined by experimentally removing the skeletons of plutei and by comparing feeding larvae ...

Echinoderms are one of the most highly derived groups of animals with many species as significant components of several marine communities. They’re classified by three fundamental shared ...

Focus: The diversification and evolution of Palaeozoic and Mesozoic echinoderms The Museum's Earth Science Echinoderm research focuses on the diversification and evolution of various groups during the ...

The end-Paleozoic witnessed the most devastating mass extinction in Earth's history so far, killing the majority of species and profoundly shaping the evolutionary history of the survivors.

Sea stars and their relatives eat, breathe and scuttle around the seafloor with tiny tube feet. Now researchers have gotten their first-ever look at similar tentacle-like structures in an extinct ...

Echinoderms are a common, widespread and successful phylum of marine animals with an extensive and well-preserved fossil record. Echinoderms are a common, widespread and successful phylum of marine ...

The conservation of genome regulatory elements over long periods of evolution is not limited to vertebrates, as previously thought, but also in echinoderms (invertebrates). This is one of the most ...