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Head start: fossil clues about how bodies evolved from two-fold to five-fold symmetry

How the five-fold symmetrical bodies of starfish and other echinoderms evolved is a mystery. New evidence fills in a key piece of the puzzle.
By
  1. Gregory A. Wray

    1. Gregory A. Wray is in the Department of Biology, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina 27708, USA.

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Animals come in an astounding diversity of forms. Some differences are so profound that it is difficult to imagine how they arose. What sequence of events enabled the shared ancestor of a jellyfish and an elephant to evolve into those fundamentally distinct creatures we see today? One of the grand puzzles of evolutionary biology is how such major alterations occur. Writing in Current Biology, Woodgate et al.1 report their investigation of a particularly perplexing transformation: the origin of a group of animals called echinoderms.

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Nature 645, 864-865 (2025)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-025-02818-x

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Competing Interests

The author declares no competing interests.

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