Scientists Find 155 Million-Year-old Starfish-Like Creature That Cloned Itself

Scientists have made an incredible discovery - a 155-million-year-old creature that had the ability to clone itself. The starfish-like creature had six arms and could regenerate its body, according to a study on the discovery. The one of a kind fossil was excavated in 2018 from a limestone deposit in Germany that was once a deep lagoon filled with coral meadows and sponge beds, according to Science Alert. The researchers said this is the only known specimen of the new species of brittle star, which they have named Ophiactis hex.

The clonal fragmentation allowed the organism to produce genetically identical offspring by breaking off parts of its own body and re-growing them - the process is called fissiparity.

"While the biology and ecology of clonal fragmentation are comparatively well understood, virtually nothing is known about the evolution and geological history of that phenomenon," Dr Ben Thuy, a palaeontologist at Luxembourg's Musee national d'histoire naturelle, wrote in the new paper describing the discovery.

It is significant because scientists are not aware about the exact time fissiparity evolved for the first time.

The 155 million-year-old fossil is preserved so well that all hook-shaped arm spines are visible. It was named after the magical supercomputer in one of Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels, a machine that is capable of thinking the unthinkable.

"While skeletons of ophiuroids with individual arms frozen in the process of regeneration are relatively common in the fossil record, cases of individuals with a regenerating body half are exceedingly rare," Dr Thuy and his team said in the study.

"To the best of our knowledge, the specimen described in the present paper is only the second case known so far, and the first one for which regeneration seems indeed linked to six-fold symmetry and clonal fragmentation," they further said.