Somasteroidea
Sign in to saveThe Somasteroidea, or Stomasteroidea, is an extinct order of asterozoan echinoderms first defined in 1951 by W. K. Spencer. Their first appearance in the fossil record was in the Early Ordovician (Tremadocian) and they had become extinct by the Late Devonian (Famennian). They are similar to the asteroids in that their bodies are flattened dorsoventrally and they have five petaloid arms with broad bases. The ambulacral plates in somasteroids are simple and unspecialized, and the arms were thought to be not flexible and were unable to assist in feeding, but the oral mouth parts were more complex
In the Vinony graph
Vinony's link graph records 8 inbound references to Somasteroidea, and connects out to Devonian, Animalia and Northern Ireland.
It is catalogued under topics including Asterozoa, Echinoderm orders and Fossil taxa described in 1951.
Vinony links it to 7 Wikipedia language editions.
Wikidata facts
- Instance of
- monotypic taxon
- Parent taxon
- Asterozoa
- Image
- Stuertzia leptosoma.jpg
Show 3 more facts
- taxon name
- Somasteroidea
- taxon rank
- class
- topic's main category
- Category:Somasteroidea
Sources (1)
via Wikidata · CC0
~1 min read
Encyclopedic overview
2 sectionsContents
- Relationship to other Asterozoan classes
- References
The Somasteroidea, or Stomasteroidea, is an extinct order of asterozoan echinoderms first defined in 1951 by W. K. Spencer. Their first appearance in the fossil record was in the Early Ordovician (Tremadocian) and they had become extinct by the Late Devonian (Famennian). They are similar to the asteroids in that their bodies are flattened dorsoventrally and they have five petaloid arms with broad bases. The ambulacral plates in somasteroids are simple and unspecialized, and the arms were thought to be not flexible and were unable to assist in feeding, but the oral mouth parts were more complex.
==Relationship to other Asterozoan classes==
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Somasteroidea” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.