New Jersey-Delware area
- Catalog Number:
- 51706
- Specimen Count:
- 33
- Precise Locality:
- Locality:
- US Mid Atlantic (PA, NJ, MD, DE, DC, VA, WV)
- Collecting Locality:
- North America, United States
- Cabinet:
- 05
- Drawer/Shelf:
- 07
- Upper Level Taxonomy:
- Animalia, Scleractinia, Microbaciidae
While some fossil corals from the Precambrian (more than 540 million years ago) have been found, they are not abundant until later. By about 450 million years ago, several groups of corals were common on Earth. Early corals included Rugosa and Tabulata corals, both with calcite skeletons. Some Rugosa (the horn corals) were solitary, while others lived in large colonies. Tabulata formed colonies with hexagonal patterns like honeycombs. Sponges and bryozoans were still the main reef builders, but these colonial corals gradually surpassed them. The Permian corals went extinct at the end-of-Permian mass extinction event, but soft-bodied, anemone like animals (“naked corals”) survived. Naked corals gave rise to modern calcified corals (scleractinians), formed when they adapted t geochemical changes in the ocean by secreting stony skeletons. During the Triassic (about 250 million years ago), stony corals assumed their role that continues today as the main reef builders on Earth.