Learn how starfish got their shape after a complicated evolutionary process, starting with an ancestor that lived 500 million ...

Morphing structure’s unique properties. Unlike traditional morphing structures built with stiff parts and joints, they leveraged the starfish’s design so that their structure bends smoothly ...

Today their bilateral larvae develop into their familiar five-axis structure as they grow, meaning that at some point, starfish dismantled all the genetic mechanisms of their bilateral ancestors.

This seems to have solved the mystery of how the starfish got its arms. But it doesn’t necessarily answer the ‘why’. Imran ...

Starfish are echinoderms, a form of invertebrate marine animals known for radial symmetry and having spiny skin. Researchers said most animal species have similar genetic structures, prompting ...

The nervous system of a starfish is shown here during an analysis. Laurent Formery Together, the data created a 3D map to determine where genes were expressed as sea stars developed and grew.