Ophiacanthidae is a family of

brittle stars Brittle stars, serpent stars, or ophiuroids (; ; referring to the serpent-like arms of the brittle star) are echinoderms in the class Ophiuroidea, closely related to starfish. They crawl across the sea floor using their flexible arms for locomo ...

. Axel Vilhelm Ljungman

circumscribed In geometry, the circumscribed circle or circumcircle of a polygon is a circle that passes through all the vertices of the polygon. The center of this circle is called the circumcenter and its radius is called the circumradius. Not every polyg ...

this taxon in 1867; he initially named the subfamily Ophiacanthinae within the family

Amphiuridae Amphiuridae (commonly called long-armed burrowing brittle stars or burrowing brittle stars) are a large family of brittle stars of the suborder Gnathophiurina. Some species are used to study echinoderm development (e.g. '' Amphipholis kochii'' an ...

. Gordon L. J. Paterson promoted its rank to family in 1985. , genera include: * '' Ophiacantha'' * '' Ophiohamus'' * '' Brezinacantha''

References

Ophiacanthida Echinoderm families Extant Early Cretaceous first appearances {{ophiuroidea-stub