Balanophyllia gigas
via iDigBio · CC0 · via iDigBio. 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
- BalanophylliaPBDB
- Diet
- suspension feederPBDB, for Balanophyllia
- 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 most 5.4 million years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 5.333 Mya and 11.7 ka, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
2 occurrences of Balanophyllia gigas 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
2 occurrences- Pliocene26%
- Pleistocene74%
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
1 formation
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The named rock units Balanophyllia gigas has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 1 occurrence has no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Balanophyllia gigas and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Balanophyllia gigas and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
11 taxa- Acanthocyathus grayi1 site
- Caryophyllia scobinosa1 site
- Cycloseris distorta1 site
- Dendrophyllia subcornigera1 site
- Distichopora nitida1 site
- Fungiacyathus fragilis1 site
- Fungiacyathus stephanus1 site
- Heterocyathus aequicostatus1 site
- Madrepora porcellana1 site
- Truncatoflabellum martensii1 site
- Truncatoflabellum vanuatu1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 1 site for Balanophyllia gigas, 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
2 references- Notes on Indo-Pacific Scleractinian Corals. Part 10. Late Pleistocene ahermatypic corals from Vanuatu1
- Simple corals from the Sumagui Formation, the Philippine Islands1
Each of the 2 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 Balanophyllia gigas
- Source
- iDigBio
- Credit
- via iDigBio
- Licence
- CC0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Balanophyllia gigas 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.
This is what the site found, which is not the same as what exists.
Keep going
What may have been alongside itBalanophyllia through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. v.d. Horst 1922