ArticleCommunications biology2022
Miniaturization during a Silurian environmental crisis generated the modern brittle star body plan.
Article in Communications biology, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. An erratum has been issued. Cited by 5 papers.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
5 citing papers in PubMed.
- But the Clock, Tick-Tock: An Empirical Case Study Highlights the Preeminence of Relaxed Clock Models in Total-Evidence Dating.Systematic biology · 2026Article
- Fossil evidence for the ancient link between clonal fragmentation, six-fold symmetry and an epizoic lifestyle in asterozoan echinoderms.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2024Article
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- Miniaturization during a Silurian environmental crisis generated the modern brittle star body plan.Communications biology · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
- Erratum issued
Authors and funding
6 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Pivotal anatomical innovations often seem to appear by chance when viewed through the lens of the fossil record. As a consequence, specific driving forces behind the origination of major organismal clades generally remain speculative. Here, we present a rare exception to this axiom by constraining the appearance of a diverse animal group (the living Ophiuroidea) to a single speciation event rather than hypothetical ancestors. Fossils belonging to a new pair of temporally consecutive species of brittle stars (Ophiopetagno paicei gen. et sp. nov. and Muldaster haakei gen. et sp. nov.) from the Silurian (444-419 Mya) of Sweden reveal a process of miniaturization that temporally coincides with a global extinction and environmental perturbation known as the Mulde Event. The reduction in size from O. paicei to M. haakei forced a structural simplification of the ophiuroid skeleton through ontogenetic retention of juvenile traits, thereby generating the modern brittle star bauplan.
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