Until now, when scientists and engineers have developed soft robots inspired by organisms, they’ve focused on modern-day living examples ... to the evolution of echinoderms.

Echinoderms such as starfish are unusual for their five-fold body symmetry. Maps of gene-expression patterns show how this body plan was acquired, and that the genes specifying head structures do ...

The earliest fossil echinoderms have, until now, come almost exclusively from North America and are represented by few taxa, all of which have a radiate body plan. Here we report the discovery of ...