Scientists from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego have discovered a new Antarctic feather star species with 20 arms and a strawberry-shaped body. Unlike other invertebrate ocean animals, feather stars stand out for their ‘large’ size and alien-like appearance’ when swimming.
This species was observed to vary in color from purplish to dark-reddish, and believed to reside somewhere between 65m (213 ft) and 1,170m (3,839 ft) underwater. It is officially classified as ‘Promachocrinus fragarius’ and found during a series of expeditions to the Antarctic Ocean between 2008 – 2017 in hopes of determining if the Antarctic feather star is actually a cryptic species.
We also elucidated previously unappreciated features, particularly body pigmentation and morphology of the centrodorsal ossicle in an attempt to diagnose some species morphologically and based on DNA data,” said the team.
