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Clypeasteroids are irregular echinoids characterized by their flattened skeleton, sophisticated mouth parts and fluffy thorns. Their flat shapes and buried lifestyles are highly adjusted to suspension feeding, thus now ecological niches were discovered. In this paper, the integral evolutionary history from the Cretaceous period to modern times will be introduced and the interrelationship between suspension feeders and plankton will be discussed. It’s worth noting that it was the nutritive environment that contributed to their adaptive evolution by boosting the thriving of plankton. The emergence of Clypeasteroids was ultimately the result of geological evolution in the Mesozoic, especially the Cretaceous period. As the dominant species in modern benthic ecosystems, clypeasteroids are still in the face of a variety of environmental changes, such as ocean warming, ocean acidification and microplastics. It is a brand new perspective to explore the interrelationship between Clypeasteroids and the marine environment by discussing the evolutionary history influenced by plankton like algae and its ecological impact of controlling the population density of algae, and it has been concluded that the marine environmental effects distinguish because Clypeasteroids was born of dramatic environmental change caused by geological activities.
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