Acropora pulchra
Acropora pulchra is a species of colonial staghorn coral in the family Acroporidae. It is found on the back fringes of reefs in shallow water in the western Indo-Pacific Ocean. The oldest fossils of this species date back to the Pleistocene.

Albert Kok at Dutch Wikipedia ( Original text: Albert Kok ) · 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
- AcroporaPBDB
- Diet
- photosymbiotic, suspension feederPBDB, for Acroporidae
- Life habit
- colonial, clonalPBDB, for Acroporidae
- Motility
- stationary, attachedPBDB, for Scleractinia
- Vision
- blindPBDB, for Anthozoa
- Environment
- marinePBDB, for Scleractinia
Time the record covers
At least 2.5 million years on record.
The record covers at least 2.58 Mya to 11.7 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 5.333 Mya to 0 Mya.
5 occurrences of Acropora pulchra 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
5 occurrences- Pliocene20%
- Pleistocene40%
- Holocene40%
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.
Acropora pulchra and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Acropora pulchra and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
38 taxa- Agaricia1 site
- Coeloseris1 site
- Cyphastrea chalcidicum1 site
- Cyphastrea microphthalma1 site
- Cyphastrea serailia1 site
- Dipsastraea1 site
- Dipsastraea pallida1 site
- Dipsastraea speciosa1 site
- Favites1 site
- Favites abdita1 site
- Galaxea astreata1 site
- Galaxea fascicularis1 site
- Goniastrea1 site
- Goniastrea pectinata1 site
- Goniastrea retiformis1 site
- Heliopora1 site
- Herpolitha limax1 site
- Hydnophora exesa1 site
- Leptoria1 site
- Leptoria phrygia1 site
- Meandrina1 site
- Montipora1 site
- Montipora informis1 site
- Montipora tuberculosa1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 1 site for Acropora pulchra, 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
4 references- Recurrent patterns of coral community and sediment facies development through successive phases of Holocene inner-shelf reef growth and decline2
- Wallace, 19991
- Les Madreporaires fossiles de Mare [The fossil corals from Mare]1
- Geological and geographical distribution of reef-corals in Japan1
Each of the 5 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 Acropora pulchra
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Albert Kok at Dutch Wikipedia ( Original text: Albert Kok )
- Licence
- Public Domain
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Acropora pulchra 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 itAcropora through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Brook 1891)