Merulinidae
Merulinidae is a family of reef-building stony corals.

NPS photo - Eva DiDonato · Public Domain · 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
- ScleractiniaPBDB
- Diet
- microcarnivore, photosymbioticPBDB, for Scleractinia
- Life habit
- intermediate-level epifaunal, colonial, clonalPBDB, for Scleractinia
- Motility
- stationary, attachedPBDB, for Scleractinia
- Vision
- blindPBDB, for Anthozoa
- Environment
- marinePBDB, for Scleractinia
Time the record covers
At least 346 million years on record.
The record covers at least 346.7 Mya to 11.7 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 358.86 Mya to 0 Mya.
4,647 occurrences of Merulinidae on record, most of them in the Pleistocene. The Paleobiology Database records this as a living group. 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
4,647 occurrences- Carboniferousunder 1%
- Late Triassicunder 1%
- Middle Jurassicunder 1%
- Late Jurassicunder 1%
- Early Cretaceous1%
- Late Cretaceous2%
- Paleoceneunder 1%
- Eocene4%
- Oligocene9%
- Miocene21%
- Pliocene9%
- Pleistocene47%
- Holocene7%
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
282 formations
- Hato Formation90
- San Luis Formation63
- Nias Formation61
- Castelgomberto Formation51
- Chaya Formation48
- Sobe Formation · Ryukyu Group46
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The named rock units Merulinidae has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 258 further formations hold fewer occurrences each and are not listed. 2,631 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Merulinidae and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Merulinidae and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
2,061 taxa- Porites62 sites
- Acropora cervicornis28 sites
- Montastraea28 sites
- Favites27 sites
- Tarbellastraea27 sites
- Acropora26 sites
- Favia25 sites
- Stylophora granulata25 sites
- Orbicella limbata24 sites
- Stylophora22 sites
- Agaricia agaricites20 sites
- Acropora palmata19 sites
- Goniopora19 sites
- Porites astreoides19 sites
- Stylophora affinis19 sites
- Tarbellastraea reussiana19 sites
- Goniastrea retiformis18 sites
- Porites baracoaensis18 sites
- Pseudodiploria strigosa18 sites
- Astreopora17 sites
- Siderastrea siderea17 sites
- Caulastrea portoricensis16 sites
- Placocyathus variabilis16 sites
- Caulastrea15 sites
The Paleobiology Database records at least 844 sites for Merulinidae, 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
543 references- Escaping the heat: range shifts of reef coral taxa in coastal Western Australia198
- Limited membership in Pleistocene reef coral assemblages from the Huon Peninsula, Papua New Guinea: constancy during global change182
- Variations in Pleistocene coral assemblages in space and time in southern and northern central Ryukyu Islands, Japan147
- A new, extinct Pleistocene reef coral from the Montastraea "annularis" species complex125
- Recherches sur les Madreporaires et les formations recifales Miocenes de la Mediterranee occidentale [Miocene corals and reefs from the western Mediterranean]120
- Geological and geographical distribution of reef-corals in Japan103
- Field work Sinai102
- Taxonomic vetting of Pleistocene coral occurrence data87
- Les Madreporaires fossiles de Mare [The fossil corals from Mare]81
- Quaternary corals (Scleractinia: Merulinidae) from the Egyptian and Saudi Arabian Red Sea Coast78
- Facies, Fossil Record, and Age of Pleistocene Reefs from the Red Sea (Saudi Arabia)77
- Evolutionary dynamics of Indo-Pacific reef corals throughout the Neogene68
Each of the 4,647 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. 531 further references are not listed. 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 Merulinidae
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- NPS photo - Eva DiDonato
- Licence
- Public Domain
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Merulinidae 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
- Source
- Wikipedia, “Merulinidae”
- 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 itScleractinia through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Verrill 1866