- Kingdom - Animalia
- Phylum - Echinodermata
- Class - Ophiuroidea
- Order - Ophiacanthida
- Family - Ophiacanthidae
- Species - †Brezinacantha tolis
- ABSOLUTELY BALLER! Insane looking prop of what was once a real animal on the skull of a modern animal. Their named after the Black Metal Band Rotting Christ.
With radial symmetry on a basis of five, closed circulatory system, and an internal skeleton. Their circulatory system is pretty unique as they use water in a hydraulic like system in their tube feet for suction. Being extinct limits the amount of knowledge that we have on them in specific but brittle stars still exist so we can some base our knowledge on them.
They have 5 long thin arms with rings of bristle like spines, that are connected to a pentagonal disk-like body. Arms can be regrown if they are snapped or broken off. With 2-3 apical oral papillae (Basically proto-teeth).
We don’t know exactly what they eat but modern brittle stars are mainly deposit feeders, scavengers, and plankton feeders, but some trapped other animals to eat.
We don’t know what their reproduction and sexes looked like.
They may have been community livers as large mass occurrences of the the species have been recorded. They may have lived alongside various ammonites, nautilus, ghost shrimp, crabs, oyster, lucinids, inocermids, and other non-specified marine animals.
The habitat where they used to live in lost to us because of the loss of the Western Interior Seaway. Some pieces have been fossilized and knowledge of still living similar species.
We know little of their behavior because of their extinction, but it is likely that they act much like their modern day relatives. And prey for much of the same animals.
Currently Extinct. Found in the Black Hills formations, late Cretaceous.
