Trichordates

R

RoscoHowOriginal

Awesome
Registered Senior Member
When I was a kid I played a computer game called SimEarth, where you were in charge of a planet from the time it forms, through life emerging, evolving, and becoming intelligent enough to colonize other planets. One of the groups of creatures that could roam around your planet were called "trichordates" and they looked like little starfish with three legs. The instruction manual said they went extinct millions of years ago but the programmers felt sorry for them and decided to include them in their game. I felt sorry for them too, so I always tried to make them become the dominant race on my planets. That and in my little kid mind I pictured them rolling around like little tires, hunting with spears, rushing to catch a plane, etc.

For some reason today I remembered that game and my little planets and I tried to do some research on trichordates, but I couldn't find anything. Can someone who is knowledgeable about biology and evolutionary dead-ends and such (or just somebody who is better at using google than I am) give me some info or point me in the right direction?
 
Interesting. Their presence always confused me. I knew what a chordate is, but a trichordate? Three backbones? Wha?
Thanks for clearing that up, invert.

You know you could get a race of intelligent robots in that game?
 
Tribrachidiuma are not chordates, so don't confuse them with having "three backbones." The difference is between bilateral or radial symmetry. In this case you could call it trilateral symmetry.
 
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