Porolithon

Porolithon is a genus of coralline red algae. Porolithon are the primary reef building algae. When coral reefs reach sea level, many corals break under the high energy impact of the waves, while coralline red algae, primarily Porolithon, continuing building and cementing the reef structure.

Porolithon

James St. John · CC BY 2.0 · 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
MetagoniolithoideaePBDB
Diet
"photoautotroph"PBDB, for Corallinaceae
Life habit
epifaunal, clonalPBDB, for Corallinaceae
Motility
stationary, attached, epibiontPBDB, for Corallinaceae
Environment
marinePBDB, for Corallinaceae

Time the record covers

At least 12 million years on record.

The record covers at least 12.8 Mya to 11.7 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 13.82 Mya to 0 Mya.

Miocene — about 2 of 39 occurrencesMiocenePliocene — about 0 of 39 occurrencesPleistocene — about 16 of 39 occurrencesPleistocene14–13 Mya — about 0.9 occurrences13–13 Mya — about 0.9 occurrences13–12 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences2.9–2.4 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences2.4–1.9 Mya — about 0.9 occurrences1.9–1.4 Mya — about 0.9 occurrences1.4–955 ka Mya — about 0.9 occurrences955 ka–477 ka Mya — about 2 occurrences477 ka–0 Mya — about 32 occurrences12.8 Mya11.7 ka14.3 Mya0 Mya

39 occurrences of Porolithon on record. 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

39 occurrences

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

3 formations

Chaya — 23.33°N, 71.93°EIronshore — 19.33°N, 81.25°WHato — 12.28°N, 69.07°W

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The named rock units Porolithon has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 34 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.

Found in the same rock

121 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 20 sites for Porolithon, 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

21 references

Each of the 39 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. 9 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 Porolithon

Credit
James St. John
Licence
CC BY 2.0
Commercial use
the licence allows it

No 3D scan of Porolithon 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 itMetagoniolithoideae through timeThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0.