Merulina

NPS photo - Larry Basch · Public Domain · via Wikidata/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 22 million years on record.
The record covers at least 23.04 Mya to 129 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 33.9 Mya to 11.7 ka.
13 occurrences of Merulina 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
13 occurrences- Oligocene8%
- Miocene15%
- Pliocene31%
- Pleistocene46%
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
- Sobe Formation · Ryukyu Group4
- Era Beds Formation1
- Sondé Formation1
- Farasan Formation1
Loading coastlines…
The named rock units Merulina has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 6 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Merulina and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Merulina and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
199 taxa- Blastomussa simplicitexta4 sites
- Cyathoseris lophiophora4 sites
- Diploastrea heliopora4 sites
- Galaxea astreata4 sites
- Pachyseris curvata4 sites
- Pocillopora jenkinsi4 sites
- Astreopora myriophthalma3 sites
- Ctenactis echinata3 sites
- Cycloseris cyclolites3 sites
- Cyphastrea microphthalma3 sites
- Dictyaraea anomala3 sites
- Favites abdita3 sites
- Favites pentagona3 sites
- Fungia3 sites
- Goniastrea retiformis3 sites
- Leptoria phrygia3 sites
- Lithophyllon concinna3 sites
- Lobophyllia corymbosa3 sites
- Pavona clavus3 sites
- Platygyra daedalea3 sites
- Porites3 sites
- Alveopora polyacantha2 sites
- Antillophyllia constricta2 sites
- Cyathoseris crassilamellata2 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 7 sites for Merulina, 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
8 references- Variations in Pleistocene coral assemblages in space and time in southern and northern central Ryukyu Islands, Japan4
- Corals from the Upper Miocene of Tjisande, Java.3
- Quaternary corals (Scleractinia: Merulinidae) from the Egyptian and Saudi Arabian Red Sea Coast1
- Coral species stability in reef corals of Papua New Guinea and the Indo-Pacific1
- Ecological stratification in the Pleistocene coral reefs of the Kenya coast1
- La Fauna Oligocenica dei dintorni di Ovada (Alessandria)1
- Corals from the Upper Kalibeng beds (Upper Pliocene) of Java1
- Corals from a lower Pliocene patch reef in Central Java1
Each of the 13 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 content2

Picture of Merulina
- Source
- Wikidata/Commons
- Credit
- NPS photo - Larry Basch
- Licence
- Public Domain
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
3D model
- Source
- Sketchfab
- Licence
- CC0 Public Domain
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
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 itMerulinidae through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Ehrenberg 1834