Tabulata, commonly known as tabulate corals, is a class of extinct corals. They are almost always colonial, forming colonies of individual hexagonal cells known as corallites defined by a skeleton of calcite, similar in appearance to a honeycomb. Adjacent cells are joined by small pores. Their distinguishing feature is their well-developed horizontal internal partitions (tabulae) within each cell, but reduced or absent vertical internal partitions (septa). They are usually smaller than rugose corals, but vary considerably in shape, from flat to conical to spherical.
Tabulata, commonly known as tabulate corals, is a class of extinct corals. They are almost always colonial, forming colonies of individual hexagonal cells known as corallites defined by a skeleton of calcite, similar in appearance to a honeycomb. Adjacent cells are joined by small pores. Their distinguishing feature is their well-developed horizontal internal partitions (tabulae) within each cell, but reduced or absent vertical internal partitions (septa). They are usually smaller than rugose corals, but vary considerably in shape, from flat to conical to spherical.
Around 300 species have been described. Among the most common tabulate corals in the fossil record are Aulopora, Favosites, Halysites, Heliolites, Pleurodictyum, Sarcinula and Syringopora. Tabulate corals with massive skeletons often contain endobiotic symbionts, such as cornulitids and Chaetosalpinx.
Discovered by embedding cosine similarity (sentence-transformers MiniLM, 384-dim).