Porites branneri
Porites branneri, known by the common name blue crust coral, is a species of stony coral in the family Poritidae. It is found growing on reefs in the Caribbean Sea and the northern and eastern coasts of South America.

(c) João D'Andretta, some rights reserved (CC BY) · CC BY 4.0 · 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
- PoritesPBDB
- Diet
- photosymbiotic, suspension feederPBDB, for Poritidae
- Life habit
- colonial, clonalPBDB, for Poritidae
- Motility
- stationary, attachedPBDB, for Poritidae
- Vision
- blindPBDB, for Anthozoa
- Environment
- marinePBDB, for Poritidae
Time the record covers
At most 4.6 million years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 5.333 Mya and 774 ka, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
16 occurrences of Porites branneri on record, most of them in the Pleistocene. 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
16 occurrences- Pliocene9%
- Pleistocene92%
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
3 formations
- Moin Formation · Limon Group14
- Old Pera Formation1
- Isla Colon Formation · Bocas del Toro Group1
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The named rock units Porites branneri has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed.
Porites branneri and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Porites branneri and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
71 taxa- Agaricia agaricites16 sites
- Agaricia lamarcki13 sites
- Stephanocoenia duncani13 sites
- Stephanocoenia intersepta13 sites
- Agaricia grahamae12 sites
- Madracis myriaster11 sites
- Montastraea cylindrica11 sites
- Madracis decactis10 sites
- Agaricia undata9 sites
- Placocyathus variabilis9 sites
- Colpophyllia natans7 sites
- Manicina areolata7 sites
- Dichocoenia stokesi6 sites
- Montastraea faveolata6 sites
- Orbicella limbata6 sites
- Manicina puntagordensis5 sites
- Montastraea cavernosa5 sites
- Madracis asperula4 sites
- Montastraea franksi4 sites
- Siderastrea siderea4 sites
- Acropora cervicornis3 sites
- Eusmilia fastigiata3 sites
- Leptoseris cucullata3 sites
- Montastraea endothecata3 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 16 sites for Porites branneri, 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
2 references- Pliocene to Pleistocene reef coral assemblages in the Limon Group of Costa Rica15
- Zooxanthellate scleractinian corals of the Bowden shell bed, Southeast Jamaica1
Each of the 16 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 Porites branneri
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- (c) João D'Andretta, some rights reserved (CC BY)
- Licence
- CC BY 4.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Porites branneri 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 itPorites through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Rathbun 1887