Pocillopora verrucosa
Pocillopora verrucosa, commonly known as cauliflower coral, rasp coral, or knob-horned coral, is a species of stony coral in the family Pocilloporidae. It is native to tropical and subtropical parts of the Indian and Pacific Oceans.

Uncredited · 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
- PocilloporaPBDB
- 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.
48 occurrences of Pocillopora verrucosa 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
48 occurrences- Miocene2%
- Pliocene4%
- Pleistocene66%
- Holocene27%
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
2 formations
Loading coastlines…
The named rock units Pocillopora verrucosa has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 46 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Pocillopora verrucosa and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Pocillopora verrucosa and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
353 taxa- Porites13 sites
- Goniastrea stelligera11 sites
- Goniastrea retiformis10 sites
- Hydrolithon onkodes10 sites
- Acropora humilis9 sites
- Goniastrea pectinata9 sites
- Leptoria phrygia9 sites
- Acropora8 sites
- Acropora robusta8 sites
- Pocillopora eydouxi8 sites
- Galaxea fascicularis7 sites
- Homotrema7 sites
- Platygyra daedalea7 sites
- Porites lobata7 sites
- Porites lutea7 sites
- Montipora6 sites
- Pocillopora damicornis6 sites
- Stylophora pistillata6 sites
- Acropora abrotanoides5 sites
- Acropora hyacinthus5 sites
- Carpenteria5 sites
- Dipsastraea pallida5 sites
- Fungia5 sites
- Leptastrea5 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 23 sites for Pocillopora verrucosa, 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
26 references- A 300000-yr coral reef record of sea level changes, Mururoa atoll (Tuamotu archipelago, French Polynesia)6
- Escaping the heat: range shifts of reef coral taxa in coastal Western Australia4
- Facies, Fossil Record, and Age of Pleistocene Reefs from the Red Sea (Saudi Arabia)4
- Quaternary fossil coral communities in uplifted strata along the Balochistan coast of Pakistan: understanding modern coral decline in the Arabian Sea3
- Coral variation in two deep drill cores: significance for the Pleistocene development of the Great Barrier Reef3
- Holocene key coral species in the Northwest Pacific: indicators of reef formation and reef ecosystem responses to global climate change and anthropogenic stresses in the near future2
- Field work Sinai2
- Fossil corals from the Gulf of California, Mexico: still a depauperate fauna but it bears more species than previously thought2
- Holocene reef accretion: southwest Molokai, Hawaii, USA2
- Postglacial growth history of a French Polynesian barrier reef tract, Tahiti, central Pacific2
- Response of reef coral communities to sea-level rise: a Holocene model from Mauritius (western Indian Ocean)2
- Paleoceanography of coral reefs in the Hawaiian-Emperor Chain2
Each of the 48 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. 14 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 content2
Picture of Pocillopora verrucosa
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- nobody named on the record
- Licence
- not stated by the source
- Commercial use
- cannot be read from the licence given — check the record
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
- 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 itPocillopora through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Ellis and Solander 1786)