Tubastraea

Tubastraea, also known as sun coral or sun polyps, is a genus of coral in the phylum Cnidaria. It is a cup coral in the family Dendrophylliidae.

Tubastraea

Franklin Samir Dattein · 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
DendrophylliidaePBDB
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 47 million years on record.

The record covers at least 48.07 Mya to 129 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 56 Mya to 11.7 ka.

Paleocene — about 0 of 10 occurrencesEocene — about 3 of 10 occurrencesEoceneOligocene — about 0 of 10 occurrencesMiocene — about 0 of 10 occurrencesPliocene — about 0 of 10 occurrencesPleistocene — about 7 of 10 occurrences57–55 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences55–53 Mya — about 0.5 occurrences53–51 Mya — about 0.5 occurrences51–50 Mya — about 0.5 occurrences50–48 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences38–36 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences36–34 Mya — about 0.5 occurrences34–32 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences1.9–0 Mya — about 7 occurrences48.07 Mya129 ka57 Mya0 Mya

10 occurrences of Tubastraea 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

10 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

4 formations

La Meseta — 64.26°S, 56.74°WLa Meseta — 64.20°S, 56.62°WMulege — 27.05°N, 111.97°WQuimper — 48.00°N, 122.83°WAssomada — 14.91°N, 23.49°W

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The named rock units Tubastraea has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 4 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.

Tubastraea and its relatives

Pleistocene

Where Tubastraea and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.

Found in the same rock

23 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 1 site for Tubastraea, 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

5 references

Each of the 10 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. 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 Tubastraea

Credit
Franklin Samir Dattein
Licence
CC BY 2.0
Commercial use
the licence allows it

No 3D scan of Tubastraea 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 itDendrophylliidae through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Lesson 1829