I was 85% finished with an outrageously convoluted explanation for this thing's complex multi-stage life cycle when I realized that I hated it and that I vastly prefer the implication of the original image flash--that it's simply a massive dinosaurian pseudo-starfish from a world and/or region of space ("seeding zone") where the vertebrates have radial body forms superficially converging on those of terrestrial echinoderms. You watch them creeping placidly along tropical beaches, or are forced to paddle around the spines and spikes sticking up out of the shallow waters where they feed on rich shellfish beds. The original image flash was actually of an aetosaur or ankylosaur configured like a starfish, and I may still try to draw that up.Possibly a relative ofthough I pictured those guys as more truly chimerical--that is, having an actual hybrid genome composed of both pterosaur and starfish DNA, rather than simply being cosmetically convergent on sea stars in morphology.