An international team of marine biologists has discovered a chilling new species of brittle star (because of its close resemblance to starfish) deep in the South Pacific that dates back to the time of the dinosaurs. As if it were an alien, the creature, called Ophiojura exbodi , is a unique case in the marine world. It has eight appendages or arms of more than 10 centimeters and each of them is covered by rows of sharp thorns. Experts say it’s almost unheard of for these kinds of creatures to feature so many arms.
A sea animal full of teeth
The first, and so far only, specimen of Ophiojura was captured in 2011 about 200 km east of the island of New Caledonia in the southwestern Pacific Ocean . There, scientists were exploring an underwater mountain about 500 meters below the surface, when they found the strange creature that has remained virtually intact for 180 million years , since the early Jurassic period. And now it has been scientifically described in the study published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.
Experts suggest that this creature represents an entirely new family of this distant cousin of the sea stars that comes from an ancient generation dating back to the Jurassic and surviving to this day.
“If he had found this thing, he would have just died,” said Christopher Mah, a researcher at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History and an expert on starfish. “This thing is all teeth.”
Phylogenetic analysis of the echinoderm showed that the star’s singular lineage emerged in the late Triassic or Jurassic approximately 160 million to 200 million years ago. Later, arm scans revealed the creature’s arm plates, joining in a chain to form its internal skeleton; each of them had a pair of holes, including a nerve hole, like a muscle insertion hole . Together, as described in the study, the passages bore a peculiar similarity to a specific set of nostrils.
Like their distant relatives, the starfish, these echinoderms use their arms to deftly crawl across the sea floor. And, although the presence of eight arms is undoubtedly one of the qualities that stand out the most, the mouth, presented as a “nest” of sharp teeth in the center, covering eight sets of jaws, is no less spectacular.
Therefore, the specimen found would be a kind of relic , which has not evolved for millions of years, as DNA evidence suggests that Ophiojura separated from its closest relative 180 million years ago, sometime in the Jurassic or early Triassic. .
The team of scientists will send another expedition in July to explore the largely unexplored seamounts in the Indian Ocean, hoping to find similar relics. “This could be the last time we find this animal,” say the authors.
Referencia: Relict from the Jurassic: new family of brittle-stars from a New Caledonian seamount Timothy D. O’Hara , Ben Thuy and Andrew F. Hugall Published:16 June 2021https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2021.0684
