Coelastrum
Coelastrum is a genus of green algae in the Scenedesmaceae family. It is a common component of the phytoplankton in freshwater habitats such as ponds, lakes, waterfalls, and temporary pools of water, particularly eutrophic ones. The genus has a more or less cosmopolitan distribution, although some species appear to have more restricted geographical distributions. The name comes from the Greek terms koilos, meaning hollow, and astron, meaning star.

Uncredited · via Wikipedia/Commons. 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.
Time the record covers
At most 4.4 million years on record.
The one occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 66 Mya and 61.66 Mya, which is a dating window rather than a span.
1 occurrence of Coelastrum on record, most of them in the Paleocene. 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
1 occurrences- Paleocene100%
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
1 formation
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The named rock units Coelastrum has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed.
Coelastrum and its relatives
PaleoceneWhere Coelastrum and its relatives were recorded in the Paleocene.
Found in the same rock
90 taxa- Aequitriradites spinulosus1 site
- Antulsporites clavus1 site
- Azollopsis1 site
- Azollopsis intermedia1 site
- Azollopsis tormentosa1 site
- Baculatisporites comaumensis1 site
- Beaupreaidites1 site
- Biretisporites1 site
- Botryococcus1 site
- Camarozonosporites ambigens1 site
- Ceratosporites equalis1 site
- Cingutriletes australis1 site
- Clavatipollenites1 site
- Clavifera triplex1 site
- Cyathidites patagonicus1 site
- Cycadopites1 site
- Dacrycarpites australiensis1 site
- Deltoidospora minor1 site
- Densoisporites velatus1 site
- Dictyophyllidites harrisii1 site
- Dinocyst indet.1 site
- Distaverrusporites simplex1 site
- Ericipites1 site
- Ericipites scabratus1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 1 site for Coelastrum, and this reads all of them. The number is how many of those sites it was catalogued from too. The 24 sharing the most are listed.
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
1 referenceEach of the 1 occurrence 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. Each entry links to doi.org. Relayed as the Paleobiology Database holds them, not checked against what they resolve to.
Media and terms
Media content1
Picture of Coelastrum
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- nobody named on the record
- Licence
- not stated by the source
- Commercial use
- cannot be read from the licence given — check the record
No 3D scan of Coelastrum 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.
The description on this site
- Source
- Wikipedia, “Coelastrum”
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
This is what the site found, which is not the same as what exists.
Keep going
What may have been alongside itFormations of the PaleoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Nagelli 1849