Like sea stars, ancient echinoderms nibbled with tiny tube feet
Rare 430-million-year-old fossils preserve signs of these tentacle-like limbs
By
Laurel Hamers
7:05pm, September 12, 2017
MULTI-PURPOSE FEET Tiny tube feet extend from this sea star’s arm. Uncommonly well-preserved fossils of an ancient relative of this echinoderm show it also had an array of these tentacle-like appendages.
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 group of these echinoderms.
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/sea-stars-ancient-echinoderms-nibbled-tiny-tube-feet
