The Modern Animal
Holothurians are “polyp-like” soft-bodied animals commonly called sea cucumbers because of their similarities in size, elongate shape, and tough skin over a soft interior. They are exclusively marine, invertebrate echinozoans (see Echinodermata ) that inhabit all water depths in modern oceans from tropical to subarctic latitudes. The organisms are predominantly free-living, benthic, sediment-feeding forms, although a few are pelagic, filter-feeding types. Some are sessile and live in burrows; others are, rarely, pelmatozoans attached to a firm substrate.
The Holothurian Skeleton
The echinoderm skeleton is always internal (endoskeleton) and is of mesodermal origin (Raup, in Boolootian, 1966). However, Pawson (1966)refers to the calcareous exoskeleton of most fossil echinoderms. Among extant holothurian genera, only two orders have animals encased in more or less rigid, external, placoid skeletons of overlapping or contiguous calcareous plates. In most other...
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References
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Gutschick, R.C. (1979). Sclerites, holothurian . In: Paleontology. Encyclopedia of Earth Science. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-31078-9_125
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-31078-9_125
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