[Animals] They discover a new species of marine animal with eight arms armed with hooks and thorns

[#Steeven.™]

A group of researchers has described a new species of starfish -animal similar to starfish-, which was baptized 'Ophiojura', said this Thursday Dr. Tim O'Hara, main curator of the Victoria Museums (Australia) and main author of the study, published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

The animal was discovered by scientists at the French National Museum of Natural History at a depth of 500 meters at the top of the Banc Durand seamount, located 200 kilometers east of New Caledonia in the South Pacific.

Ophiojura, unique in its kind, has eight long arms armed with a series of hooks and thorns. The expert explained that a CT microtomography revealed rows of sharp teeth on all the jaws, which supposedly serve to trap and destroy prey.

"If I had found this creature, I would have died," Christopher Mah, a researcher at the US National Museum of Natural History and an expert on starfish, who reviewed the article, told The New York Times. "That thing is all teeth," he added.

DNA analysis showed that the species evolved from its closest living relatives about 180 million years ago, between the Triassic and Early Jurassic, when dinosaurs first emerged.

"We now call them 'paleoendemic,' that is, a branch of life that was once widespread and is now limited to a few areas," O'Hara said. "Regarding the life of the seabed, the center of paleoendemism is in the continental margins and in the seamounts, in tropical waters between 200 and 1,000 meters deep," he pointed out.