Definitions for "Deuterostomes"
Animals in which the first opening that appears in the embryo becomes the anus while the mouth appears at the other end of the digestive system. Main groups include chordates and echinoderms.
A group of Metazoans that exhibit indeterminate, radial cleavage and that develop a mouth independent of, and at some distance from, the blastopore. (Echinoderms and Chordates and related minor phyla).
All triploblasts closer to the early bird than to the worm. Deuterostomes (as opposed to protostomes) are characterized by development of the blastopore into the anus, rather than the mouth. The major deuterostome taxa are the Echinodermata and Chordata. Actually, in our treatment of the group, we use an alternate, crown group definition: " sea stars + movie stars." See Deuterostomia.