Brittlestars are delicate and beautiful creatures with a history stretching back to the Ordovician. Attached to the central body disc are five arms which help the animal scuttle or swim over the sea bed. They are echinoderms: members of the group that includes starfish and sea urchins. You are unlikely to find a complete brittlestar fossil except in very high-quality fossilferous rocks like those at Solnhofen in Germany. Their arms, however, sometimes appear in fossiliferous limestones.

See also: blastoids
See also: starfish
See also: sea lilies
See also: sea urchins

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