Porites furcata
Porites furcata, commonly known as hump coral, thin finger coral or branched finger coral, is a species of stony coral in the genus Porites. It is found in the Caribbean Sea and western Atlantic Ocean.

James St. John · CC BY 2.0 · 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 least 11 million years on record.
The record covers at least 11.63 Mya to 11.7 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 15.98 Mya to 0 Mya.
86 occurrences of Porites furcata 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
86 occurrences- Miocene1%
- Pliocene34%
- Pleistocene61%
- Holocene5%
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
19 formations
- Quebrada Chocolate Formation · Limon Group17
- Seroe Domi Formation9
- Moin Formation · Limon Group7
- Port Morant Formation · Upper Coastal Group6
- Isla Colon Formation4
- Key Largo Limestone Formation3
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The named rock units Porites furcata has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 23 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Porites furcata and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Porites furcata and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
159 taxa- Agaricia agaricites30 sites
- Acropora cervicornis29 sites
- Acropora palmata21 sites
- Porites astreoides20 sites
- Pseudodiploria strigosa19 sites
- Siderastrea siderea18 sites
- Caulastrea portoricensis16 sites
- Orbicella limbata16 sites
- Colpophyllia natans15 sites
- Stylophora granulata14 sites
- Manicina areolata13 sites
- Porites baracoaensis13 sites
- Dichocoenia stokesi11 sites
- Stylophora monticulosa10 sites
- Thysanus9 sites
- Diploria labyrinthiformis8 sites
- Madracis decactis8 sites
- Montastrea cavernosa8 sites
- Porites portoricensis8 sites
- Pseudodiploria clivosa8 sites
- Stylophora affinis8 sites
- Placocyathus variabilis7 sites
- Eusmilia fastigiata6 sites
- Montastraea cavernosa6 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 44 sites for Porites furcata, 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
20 references- Pliocene to Pleistocene reef coral assemblages in the Limon Group of Costa Rica25
- Origination preceding extinction during late Cenozoic turnover of Caribbean reefs9
- Ecological persistence interrupted in Caribbean coral reefs8
- Neogene reef coral assemblages of the Bocas del Toro region, Panama: the rise of Acropora palmata6
- Coral Biodiversity and Zonation on a Pleistocene Reef, Southeastern Jamaica5
- Overlapping species boundaries and hybridization within the Montastrea "annularis" reef coral complex in the Pleistocene of the Bahama Islands5
- Broad-scale patterns in Pleistocene coral reef communities from the Caribbean: implications for ecology and management3
- Zooxanthellate scleractinian corals of the Bowden shell bed, Southeast Jamaica3
- Shifting ecological baselines and the demise of Acropora cervicornis in the western North Atlantic and Caribbean Province: a Pleistocene perspective3
- Relict shelf-edge Holocene coral reef: southeast coast of Florida3
- Coral assemblages and reef environments in the Bahamas Drilling Project cores2
- Community structure of Pleistocene coral reefs of Curacao, Netherlands Antilles2
Each of the 86 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. 8 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 Porites furcata
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- James St. John
- Licence
- CC BY 2.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Porites furcata 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
- 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. Lamarck 1816