Some brittle stars give an arm and a leg (and still another appendage) to reproduce.
This process, known as clonal fragmentation, is practiced by almost 50 species of existing brittle stars and their starfish relatives.
However, scientists have found it difficult to determine when brittle stars, a gangly group of echinoderms, started reproducing this way.
A recently discovered fossil from Germany pushes the origin of cloning sea stars back more than 150 million years.
The specimen, he added, shows that “clonal fragmentation is actually much older than people previously thought.”
Persons:
”, Ben Thuy
Organizations:
Royal Society, National Museum of
Locations:
Germany, Luxembourg