Coelastrea
Coelastrea is a genus of stony corals in the family Merulinidae. Members of this genus are native to the Indo-Pacific region and their ranges extend from the Red Sea and the east coast of Africa through the Indian Ocean and Western Pacific Ocean as far as Australia, Japan and the East China Sea.

Zoe Richards et al · 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
- MerulinidaePBDB
- 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 5.3 million years on record.
The record covers at least 5.333 Mya to 11.7 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 11.63 Mya to 0 Mya.
23 occurrences of Coelastrea 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
23 occurrences- Miocene4%
- Pliocene13%
- Pleistocene74%
- Holocene9%
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
- Nias Formation2
- Samadai Formation2
- Farasan Formation2
- Hateruma Formation · Ryukyu Group1
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The named rock units Coelastrea has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 16 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Coelastrea and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Coelastrea and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
181 taxa- Porites5 sites
- Galaxea astreata3 sites
- Lobophyllia corymbosa3 sites
- Stylophora pistillata3 sites
- Astreopora2 sites
- Cyphastrea serailia2 sites
- Diploastrea heliopora2 sites
- Dipsastraea pallida2 sites
- Dipsastraea rotumana2 sites
- Favia2 sites
- Fungia2 sites
- Galaxea fascicularis2 sites
- Goniastrea2 sites
- Goniopora2 sites
- Lobophyllia hemprichii2 sites
- Pachyseris rugosa2 sites
- Platygyra2 sites
- Plesiastrea versipora2 sites
- Pocillopora madreporacea2 sites
- Seriatopora hystrix2 sites
- Acar plicata1 site
- Acropora1 site
- Acropora aspera1 site
- Acropora longicyathus1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 6 sites for Coelastrea, 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
12 references- Limited membership in Pleistocene reef coral assemblages from the Huon Peninsula, Papua New Guinea: constancy during global change6
- Quaternary corals (Scleractinia: Merulinidae) from the Egyptian and Saudi Arabian Red Sea Coast4
- Quaternary fossil coral communities in uplifted strata along the Balochistan coast of Pakistan: understanding modern coral decline in the Arabian Sea3
- Past corals and recent reefs in Indonesia2
- Pleistocene Reefs of the Red Sea Coast, Sudan: Depositional Environments, Fossil Coral, Age Dating and Diagenesis1
- Contributions to the Pleistocene coral reefs of the Red Sea coast, Egypt1
- Interstadial coral reef terraces and relative sea-level changes during marine oxygen isotope stages 3-4, Kikai Island, central Ryukyus, Japan1
- Community Structures of Recent and Pleistocene Hermatypic Corals in the Ryukyu Islands, Japan1
- Evidence of high sea level during isotope stage 5c in Queensland, Australia1
- Ecological stratification in the Pleistocene coral reefs of the Kenya coast1
- Corals from the Upper Miocene of Tjisande, Java.1
- Jungtertiäre und quartäre Anthozoen von Timor und Obi, 2. Teil [Upper Tertiary and Quarternary Anthozoa from Timor and Obi, part 2]1
Each of the 23 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 Coelastrea
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Zoe Richards et al
- Licence
- CC BY 4.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Coelastrea 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
- Source
- Wikipedia, “Coelastrea”
- 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 itMerulinidae through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Verrill 1866