Petrophyllia
Petrophyllia is a genus of corals belonging to the family Oculinidae.

Cairns S, Kitahara M (2012) · CC BY 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
- OculininaePBDB
- Diet
- suspension feederPBDB, for Oculinidae
- Life habit
- colonial, clonalPBDB, for Faviina
- Motility
- stationary, attachedPBDB, for Oculinidae
- Vision
- blindPBDB, for Anthozoa
- Environment
- marinePBDB, for Scleractinia
Time the record covers
At least 105 million years on record.
The record covers at least 106.3 Mya to 774 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 110.1 Mya to 129 ka.
41 occurrences of Petrophyllia on record, most of them in the Eocene. 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
41 occurrences- Early Cretaceous2%
- Late Cretaceous10%
- Paleocene2%
- Eocene37%
- Oligocene37%
- Plioceneunder 1%
- Pleistocene11%
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
20 formations
- Byram Formation · Vicksburg Group13
- Lisbon Formation · Claiborne Group3
- Llajas Formation2
- Moin Formation · Limon Group2
- Bermont Formation2
- Mandrikovka Formation2
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The named rock units Petrophyllia has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 2 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Petrophyllia and its relatives
EoceneWhere Petrophyllia and its relatives were recorded in the Eocene.
Found in the same rock
501 taxa- Crassatella3 sites
- Polinices3 sites
- Polinices (Euspira) nuciformis3 sites
- Turricula3 sites
- Acila (Truncacila) shumardi2 sites
- Agaricia agaricites2 sites
- Cirsotrema2 sites
- Clavilithes2 sites
- Cylichnina tantilla2 sites
- Flabellum cuneiforme2 sites
- Madracis myriaster2 sites
- Mesalia claibornensis2 sites
- Ostrea2 sites
- Pachecoa declivis2 sites
- Pitar uvasana coquillensis2 sites
- Porites furcata2 sites
- Pseudoliva vetusta2 sites
- Pseudoperissolax blakei2 sites
- Striatolamia macrota2 sites
- Surculites mathewsonii2 sites
- Turritella2 sites
- Turritella nasuta2 sites
- Venericardia (Venericor) densata2 sites
- ? Alatocythereis sp.1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 18 sites for Petrophyllia, 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
23 references- Testing for patterns of faunal persistence in the early Oligocene Byram Formation of Mississippi11
- Eocene and Oligocene coral faunas of Washington3
- Additions to the Eocene megafossil fauna of the Llajas Formation, Simi Valley, southern California2
- Pliocene to Pleistocene reef coral assemblages in the Limon Group of Costa Rica2
- Kuzmicheva, 19872
- Stratigraphic Distribution of Paleocene and Eocene Fossils in the Eastern Gulf Coast Region2
- Late Cenozoic corals of south Florida2
- New corals: one recent, Alaska; three Eocene, Alabama and Louisiana2
- Taxonomic vetting of Pleistocene coral occurrence data1
- A condensed middle Cenomanian succession in the Dakota Sandstone (Upper Cretaceous), Sevilleta National Wildlife Refuge, Socorro County, New Mexico1
- Corals from deep-water methane-seep deposits in Paleogene strata of western Oregon and Washington, USA1
- Biostratigraphy and Paleoecology of Diagnostic Invertebrates and Vertebrates from the Type Locality of the Oligocene Rosefiled Marl Beds, Louisiana1
Each of the 41 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. 11 further references are not listed. 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 Petrophyllia
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Cairns S, Kitahara M (2012)
- Licence
- CC BY 3.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Petrophyllia 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 itOculininae through timeFormations of the EoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Conrad 1855)