New fossils of Jurassic ophiurid brittle stars (Ophiuroidea; Ophiurida) provide evidence for early clade evolution in the deep sea.

Understanding of the evolutionary history of the ophiuroids, or brittle stars, is hampered by a patchy knowledge of the fossil record. Especially, the stem members of the living clades are poorly known, resulting in blurry concepts of the early clade evolution and imprecise estimates of divergence ages. Here, we describe new ophiuroid fossil from the Lower Jurassic of France, Luxembourg and Austria and introduce the new taxa gen.

Dark offshoot: Phylogenomic data sheds light on the evolutionary history of a new species of cave brittle star.

Caves are a useful system for testing evolutionary and biogeographic hypotheses, as they are isolated, and their environmental conditions have resulted in adaptive selection across different taxa. Although in recent years many more cave species have been discovered, cave-dwelling members of the class Ophiuroidea (brittle stars) remain scarce. Out of the more than two thousand species of brittle stars described to date, only three are regarded as true cave-dwellers.

Revision of the genus Ophioteichus H.L. Clark, 1938 (Ophiuroidea: Ophiolepididae).

In this study we re-describe the ophiuroid genus Ophioteichus H.L. Clark, 1938 and diagnose the species using existing and new characters found by examining the type material.

Ophioderma peruana, a new species of brittlestar (Echinodermata, Ophiuroidea, Ophiodermatidae) from the Peruvian coast.

Ophioderma peruana sp. n. is a new species of Ophiodermatidae, extending the distribution of the genus Ophioderma to Lobos de Afuera Island, Peru, easily distinguishable from its congeners by its peculiarly fragmented dorsal arm plates.