Abstract
The fossil record of the genus Heliopora begins in the Early Cretaceous Period with its oldest representative Heliopora japonica, and “notwithstanding its great antiquity, it differs very little from the living Heliopora coerulea” (Eguchi 1948). Heliopora coerulea, the blue coral, is a common reef former of modern Indo-Pacific reefs and the sole surviving species of the Helioporidae, the only family of the order Coenothecalia. Coenothecalia, one of six orders of the subclass Octocorallia, is unique among the Octocorallia because Heliopora has a trabecular skeleton of fibrous aragonite (Hill 1960). Scattered throughout the corallum are autopores (0.5 mm to 2.0 mm) surrounded by a coenenchyma of numerous smaller siphonopores (Fig. 1).
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Colgan, M.W. (1984). The Cretaceous Coral Heliopora (Octocorallia, Coenothecalia)—a Common Indo-Pacific Reef Builder. In: Eldredge, N., Stanley, S.M. (eds) Living Fossils. Casebooks in Earth Sciences. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4613-8271-3_33
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