Ctenella

Ctenella is a monotypic genus of stony coral in the family Euphylliidae. It is represented by a single species, Ctenella chagius. These corals are massive in size with meandering valleys between the calyces which have solid, non-porous walls and fine, evenly spaced, solid septae. They are found in the Indian Ocean being endemic to the Chagos Archipelago. It forms solid, smooth hemispherical domes.

Ctenella

Anne Sheppard · CC BY-SA 3.0 · 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.

On record

Recorded, not inferred
Sits inside
EuphylliidaePBDB
Diet
photosymbiotic, suspension feederPBDB, for Euphylliidae
Life habit
colonial, clonalPBDB, for Euphylliidae
Motility
stationary, attachedPBDB, for Euphylliidae
Vision
blindPBDB, for Anthozoa
Environment
marinePBDB, for Scleractinia

Time the record covers

At most 4.4 million years on record.

Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 15.98 Mya and 11.63 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.

Miocene — about 3 of 3 occurrencesMiocene16–16 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences16–16 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences16–16 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences16–15 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences15–15 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences15–15 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences15–15 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences15–15 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences15–15 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences15–14 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences14–14 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences14–14 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences14–14 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences14–14 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences14–13 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences13–13 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences13–13 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences13–13 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences13–13 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences13–13 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences13–12 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences12–12 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences12–12 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences12–12 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences12–12 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences12–11 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences16.5 Mya11.1 Mya

3 occurrences of Ctenella on record, most of them in the Miocene. The Paleobiology Database records this as a living group, and the chart stops with its fossils rather than at the present. 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

3 occurrences

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

2 formations

Yalam — 4.28°S, 151.83°ERembang — 6.70°S, 111.33°E

Loading coastlines…

The named rock units Ctenella has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed.

Ctenella and its relatives

Miocene

Where Ctenella and its relatives were recorded in the Miocene.

Found in the same rock

7 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 1 site for Ctenella, 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

2 references

Each of the 3 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. Each entry links to the Paleobiology Database's own record for the work.

Media and terms

Media content1

Picture of Ctenella

Credit
Anne Sheppard
Licence
CC BY-SA 3.0
Commercial use
the licence allows it

No 3D scan of Ctenella was found in MorphoSource and Sketchfab.

Smithsonian Open Access was not reached for this taxon, so this list is what the others held rather than everything there is.

The description on this site

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 itEuphylliidae through timeFormations of the MioceneThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Matthai 1928