Stock Photo - Sand dollar (or sea cookie or snapper biscuit in New Zealand, or pansy shell in South Africa) are species of extremely flattened, burrowing sea urchins. The sand dollar possess a rigid skeleton known as a test. The test consists of calcium carbonate plates arranged in a fivefold radial pattern. In living individuals the test is covered by a skin of velvet-textured spines; these spines are in turn covered with very small hairs. Coordinated movements of the spines enable sand dollars to move across the seabed. The velvety spines of live sand dollars appear in a variety of colors—green, blue, violet, or purple—depending on the species. Individuals which are very recently dead or dying are sometimes found on beaches with much of the external morphology still intact. Dead individuals are commonly found with their empty test devoid of all surface material and bleached white by sunlight.