Goniopora
Searched as Goniopora girundiensis secunda. The Paleobiology Database treats Goniopora as the accepted name.
Goniopora, commonly referred to as flowerpot coral or daisy coral, is a genus of colonial stony coral found in lagoons and turbid water conditions. Goniopora have numerous daisy-like polyps that extend outward from the base, each tipped with 24 stinging tentacles which surrounds a mouth.

Peter Young Cho, MD · CC BY-SA 3.0 · 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
- PoritidaePBDB
- 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 most 7.1 million years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 23.04 Mya and 15.98 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
2 occurrences of Goniopora on record, most of them in the Miocene. The Paleobiology Database records this as a living group, and the chart stops with its fossils rather than at the present. 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- Miocene100%
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.
Goniopora and its relatives
MioceneWhere Goniopora and its relatives were recorded in the Miocene.
Found in the same rock
1,858 taxa- Porites61 sites
- Favites28 sites
- Stylophora28 sites
- Montastraea27 sites
- Astreopora25 sites
- Acropora23 sites
- Favia23 sites
- Alveopora19 sites
- Actinacis18 sites
- Porites portoricensis17 sites
- Porites waylandi17 sites
- Montastraea endothecata16 sites
- Porites baracoaensis16 sites
- Siderastrea16 sites
- Corallinaceae15 sites
- Pavona15 sites
- Stylophora pistillata15 sites
- Caulastrea14 sites
- Hydnophora14 sites
- Leptoseris14 sites
- Antiguastrea13 sites
- Lithothamnion13 sites
- Solenastrea bournoni13 sites
- Fungia12 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 171 sites for Goniopora, 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
1 referenceEach 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. Each entry links to the Paleobiology Database's own record for the work.
Media and terms
Media content2
Picture of Goniopora
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Peter Young Cho, MD
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 3.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
3D model
- Source
- Sketchfab
- Licence
- CC0 Public Domain
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
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
- Source
- Wikipedia, “Goniopora”
- 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 itPoritidae through timeFormations of the MioceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Blainville 1830