Wednesday, April 9, 2008

Welcome to the Echinoblog!!

(my thanks to John Lawrence for the image)
Greetings!

The Echinoblog will be an ongoing venue for collecting and presenting perspectives, popular news, and articles on the Echinodermata! Echinoderms are a phylum of exclusively marine animals, that are familiar to almost anyone who has heard of the ocean.


The group’s living members include starfish (Asteroidea), brittle and serpent stars (Ophiuroidea), sea urchins, sand dollars, and sea biscuits (Echinoidea), feather stars and stone lilies (Crinoidea), and sea cucumbers (Holothurians). Tired of modern echinoderms? There are easily two to three times as many major Paleozoic echinoderm groups. Many of which are strange and unusual forms that one could easily mistake for extraterrestrial life on another ocean!

What I hope to include:

*Short articles on various aspects of echinoderm biology that highlight various taxa and topics of interest.

*Collected popular news articles featuring different echinoderm taxa.

*New developments in the professional field of echinoderm biology highlighting as many different disciplines as possible: paleontology, conservation, systematics, deep-sea biology, ecology, reproduction, etc.

*Unusual or striking images and/or websites


*Contemporary issues or questions to the echinoderm (and related professional) community


*Anything that seems of general interest.


I hope to update multiple times throughout the week-sometimes shorter, sometimes longer.

I am happy to entertain contributions if you have something to say about your research project or announcement for an event, or whatever.

Please feel free to comment or email me! I'd love to hear from you.

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