Weird sea urchin

[Fuzzmutton]

Ok, these things are probably common, I've just never seen one and I can't find a picture of it exactly on the internet. I think it was a type of pencil urchin because it had thick sparse spines of a reddish-brown color (I think) and the coolest part was the perfect star on it's back. It looked like the kind of star they taught you to make in Kindergarten as a kid.

I was diving in Los Arcos, Puerto Vallarta, Mexico in about 40' of water.

What izzit?

 

[drbill]

Look up the slate pencil urchin, Eucidaris thouarsii. It is found in those waters. I'd post a picture from my collection, but haven't put one up on my Internet web site yet.

 

[Brandon]

Pictures:




Pics taken from this site:

http://biblioweb.dgsca.unam.mx/cienciasdelmar/especiales/1978-1/articulo453.html

In Spanish, but there's a bunch of photos there.

-B.

 

[drbill]

Thanks for posting those, Brandon. The first two images are from collected dead specimens. I'll try to add at least one of my images of the species live to better show the colors. They are found as far north as my home, Santa Catalina Island off Los Angeles. I've only seen them here twice that I can remember.

Well, I used this question to put together a collage of images for my upcoming newspaper column on the slate pencil urchin, so here it is:

 

[Fuzzmutton]

Hey thanks!! On one of the pictures from the site Brandon posted (not the 3 on the post, but one from the source website) I found one with a star that was similar to what I saw. Believe it or not I saw something that resembled a pentagram, a star drawn with 5 straight lines! Anyway, I feel sure that this is the critter

Fuzz