A 155-million-year-old fossil of a new brittle star species, Ophiactis hex, has recently been discovered, showcasing a starfish-like creature cloning itself. This remarkable find has shed light on the process of clonal fragmentation, in which an organism produces genetically identical offspring by breaking off parts of its own body and regrowing them.
Dr. Ben Thuy, a paleontologist at Luxembourg’s Musée national d’histoire naturelle and co-author of the study, explained that some brittle stars and starfish have unique ways of reproduction, splitting in halves and regrowing the missing body parts. The discovery of the 155-million-year-old fossil provides evidence that clonal fragmentation in star-shaped echinoderms has deep evolutionary roots dating back to the Jurassic period.
The new species, named Ophiactis hex, was discovered in limestone during a 2018 excavation in southern Germany. The paper concludes that Ophiactis hex represents the first fossil case of a fissiparous ophiuroid, suggesting that clonal fragmentation, combined with six-fold symmetry and an epizoic lifestyle, was established as a means of asexual reproduction in ophiuroids by the Late Jurassic.
