Poritidae
Poritidae is a family of stony corals. Members of the family are colonial hermatypic (reef-building) corals. They are variable in size and form but most are massive, laminar or ramose as well as branching and encrusting. The corallites are compact with very little coenosteum covering the skeleton. The walls of the corallites and the septa are porous. J.E.N. Veron considers the family is not a natural grouping but is a miscellaneous collection of genera that do not fit well elsewhere.

Uncredited · Copyrighted free use · 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
- PoriticaePBDB
- Diet
- photosymbiotic, suspension feederPBDB
- Life habit
- colonial, clonalPBDB
- Motility
- stationary, attachedPBDB
- Vision
- blindPBDB, for Anthozoa
- Environment
- marinePBDB
Time the record covers
At least 236 million years on record.
The record covers at least 237 Mya to 11.7 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 241.464 Mya to 0 Mya.
2,591 occurrences of Poritidae 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
2,591 occurrences- Middle Triassicunder 1%
- Late Triassicunder 1%
- Middle Jurassic3%
- Late Jurassicunder 1%
- Early Cretaceousunder 1%
- Late Cretaceous1%
- Paleocene1%
- Eocene3%
- Oligocene10%
- Miocene29%
- Pliocene10%
- Pleistocene35%
- Holocene7%
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
237 formations
- Ironshore Formation70
- Moin Formation · Limon Group64
- Quebrada Chocolate Formation · Limon Group50
- Gurabo Formation50
- Culebra Formation36
- Isla Colon Formation · Bocas del Toro Group36
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The named rock units Poritidae has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 213 further formations hold fewer occurrences each and are not listed. 1,220 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Poritidae and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Poritidae and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
1,826 taxa- Porites77 sites
- Thamnasteria mettensis47 sites
- Periseris elegantula42 sites
- Isastrea bernardiana39 sites
- Montastraea28 sites
- Goniopora26 sites
- Acropora24 sites
- Porites baracoaensis24 sites
- Acropora cervicornis23 sites
- Stylophora granulata23 sites
- Agaricia agaricites22 sites
- Stylophora22 sites
- Tarbellastraea22 sites
- Favites20 sites
- Solenastrea bournoni20 sites
- Stylophora affinis20 sites
- Favia19 sites
- Orbicella limbata19 sites
- Porites astreoides19 sites
- Stylophora monticulosa17 sites
- Astreopora16 sites
- Porites waylandi16 sites
- Porites portoricensis15 sites
- Pseudodiploria strigosa15 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 827 sites for Poritidae, and this reads 240 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
471 references- Pliocene to Pleistocene reef coral assemblages in the Limon Group of Costa Rica116
- Neogene paleontology in the northern Dominican Republic, 3. The family Poritidae (Anthozoa, Scleractinia)108
- Neogene reef coral assemblages of the Bocas del Toro region, Panama: the rise of Acropora palmata75
- Variations in Pleistocene coral assemblages in space and time in southern and northern central Ryukyu Islands, Japan71
- Coral associations of the Pleistocene Ironshore Formation, Grand Cayman69
- Evolutionary dynamics of Indo-Pacific reef corals throughout the Neogene55
- Recherches sur les Madreporaires et les formations recifales Miocenes de la Mediterranee occidentale [Miocene corals and reefs from the western Mediterranean]52
- Field work Sinai50
- Coraux constructeurs du Bajocien inférieure de France. 2ème Partie44
- Fossil corals from central America, Cuba, and Porto Rico, with an account of the American Tertiary, Pleistocene, and Recent coral reefs42
- Origination preceding extinction during late Cenozoic turnover of Caribbean reefs41
- Ecological persistence interrupted in Caribbean coral reefs35
Each of the 2,591 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. 459 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 Poritidae
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- nobody named on the record
- Licence
- Copyrighted free use
- Commercial use
- cannot be read from the licence given — check the record
No 3D scan was found. Smithsonian Open Access, MorphoSource and Sketchfab were all searched.
The description on this site
- Source
- Wikipedia, “Poritidae”
- 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 itPoriticae through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Gray 1840