Lithophyllum
Searched as Lithophyllum densum. The Paleobiology Database treats Lithophyllum as the accepted name.
Lithophyllum is a genus of thalloid red algae belonging to the family Corallinaceae.

Martin Smith · 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
- LithophylloideaePBDB
- Diet
- "photoautotroph"PBDB, for Rhodophyta
Time the record covers
At most 18 million years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 66 Mya and 48.07 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
6 occurrences of Lithophyllum on record, most of them in the Paleocene. 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
6 occurrencesThese 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
Loading coastlines…
The named rock units Lithophyllum has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 5 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Lithophyllum and its relatives
PaleoceneWhere Lithophyllum and its relatives were recorded in the Paleocene.
Found in the same rock
1,104 taxa- Lithothamnion107 sites
- Mesophyllum74 sites
- Lithoporella59 sites
- Sporolithon48 sites
- Lithoporella melobesioides43 sites
- Corallina34 sites
- Polystrata alba33 sites
- Spongites32 sites
- Halimeda24 sites
- Melobesioideae24 sites
- Neogoniolithon24 sites
- Archaeolithothamnium22 sites
- Bryozoa20 sites
- Porites19 sites
- Neomeris18 sites
- Distichoplax biserialis17 sites
- Hydrolithon onkodes16 sites
- Amphiroa15 sites
- Jania15 sites
- Porolithon15 sites
- Amphistegina14 sites
- Echinoidea14 sites
- Lithothamnion magnum14 sites
- Cibicides13 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 298 sites for Lithophyllum, and this reads 240 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
3 references- Les algues des formations transgressives maestrichtiennes, paléocènes et yprésiennes de la côte sud-orientale de la Corse3
- Contribution to the knowledge of the Palaeogene reef-complexes of the Myjava-Hricov-Haligovka Zone (West Carpathians)2
- Wapienie glonowe i rodolity z piaskowców ciężkowickich jednostki śląskiej w Karpatach1
Each of the 6 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 Lithophyllum
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Martin Smith
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 3.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Lithophyllum 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 itLithophylloideae through timeFormations of the PaleoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Philippi 1837