Actinhelia elegans
via iDigBio · via iDigBio. May be a photograph of a specimen, or an artist’s reconstruction — an interpretation of a skeleton, since colour and soft tissue are almost never preserved.
On record
Recorded, not inferred- Sits inside
- ActinheliaPBDB
- Diet
- photosymbiotic, suspension feederPBDB, for Actinacididae
- Life habit
- epifaunal, colonial, clonalPBDB, for Actinacididae
- Motility
- stationary, attachedPBDB, for Actinacididae
- Vision
- blindPBDB, for Anthozoa
- Environment
- marinePBDB, for Scleractinia
Time the record covers
At most 6.2 million years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 72.2 Mya and 66 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
11 occurrences of Actinhelia elegans on record, most of them in the Late Cretaceous. Bar height is expected occurrences, not a count: each fossil is spread across the span it is dated to, so a tall narrow bar means tight dating and a low wide one means loose.
When
11 occurrences- Late Cretaceous100%
These are dates about fossils, not the animal: the record can only begin after it arose and end before it died out, so either end may reach further. Shares are expected occurrences: a fossil dated to a span is counted partly in each period it straddles. More on what this infers.
Found in
4 formations
- Maastricht Formation4
- Cardenas Formation2
- Titanosarcolites Limestone Formation1
- Ocozocoautla Formation1
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The named rock units Actinhelia elegans has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 3 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Actinhelia elegans and its relatives
Late CretaceousWhere Actinhelia elegans and its relatives were recorded in the Late Cretaceous.
Found in the same rock
23 taxa- Dictuophyllia conferticostata3 sites
- Multicolumnastraea cyathiformis2 sites
- Siderastrea adkinsi2 sites
- Actinacis haueri1 site
- Actinacis martiniana1 site
- Actinastrea1 site
- Barysmilia trechmanni1 site
- Biradiolites1 site
- Bournonia1 site
- Cladocora gracilis1 site
- Cladocora jamaicaensis1 site
- Coralliochama1 site
- Cyathoseris catadupensis1 site
- Dermosmiliopsis orbignyi1 site
- Favia gregoryi1 site
- Gyrodendron boltonae1 site
- Hippurites1 site
- Neithea1 site
- Paracycloseris nariensis1 site
- Placocoenia major1 site
- Synastrea agaricites1 site
- Tampsia1 site
- Trochoseris aperta1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 3 sites for Actinhelia elegans, and this reads all of them. The number is how many of those sites it was catalogued from too.
This is not a list of everything alive at the time. It is only what has come out of the same ground as this animal and been written down.
Entered from
5 references- pers. comm.4
- Numerical distribution of Santonian to Danian corals (Scleractinia, Octocorallia) of southern Limburg, the Netherlands4
- Scleractinian corals from the Cardenas Formation (Maastrichtian), San Luis Potosi, Mexico1
- Corals from the Upper Cretaceous (Maastrichtian) Ocozocoautla Formation, Chiapas, Mexico1
- Depositional environment of coral-rudist associations in the Upper Cretaceous Cardenas Formation (central Mexico)1
Each of the 11 occurrences read was entered from one of these publications, ordered by how many each accounts for. This is not a search for papers mentioning the name. Entries link to doi.org where the Paleobiology Database holds an identifier, and to its own record where it does not. Relayed as the Paleobiology Database holds them, not checked against what they resolve to.
Media and terms
Media content1
Picture of Actinhelia elegans
- Source
- iDigBio
- Credit
- via iDigBio
- Licence
- not stated by the source
- Commercial use
- cannot be read from the licence given — check the record
No 3D scan of Actinhelia elegans was found in Sketchfab.
Smithsonian Open Access and MorphoSource were not reached for this taxon, so this list is what the others held rather than everything there is.
This is what the site found, which is not the same as what exists.
Keep going
What may have been alongside itActinhelia through timeFormations of the Late CretaceousThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Goldfuss 1826)