“…This discussion was historically framed as the question of whether the order Paxillosida (or one of its member families) diverged early or late during asteroid evolution. Evidence has been presented for (Mortensen, 1922(Mortensen, , 1923Fell, 1962aFell, , 1962bFell, , 1963Gale, 1987;Lafay et al, 1995;Wada et al, 1996;Gale, 2013) and against (MacBride, 1921(MacBride, , 1923a(MacBride, , 1923bMadsen, 1966;Blake, 1972Blake, , 1987Blake, , 1988Janies et al, 2011;Mah and Blake, 2012;Blake and Mah, 2014) an early divergence of Paxillosida among asteroid lineages. Recent morphological and molecular-based hypotheses of phylogenetic relationships amongst traditional asteroid orders are summarized in Fig.…”