Marine invertebrates: learn your corals

Cnidarians represent a primitive stage of eumetazoans (animals with tissues). As jellyfish and polyps, they provoke different reactions in us. As corals, they are popular because of their variety of shapes and colors. Paleontological research cannot reconstruct the colors from known fossils. However, the calcareous skeletons, and in rare cases polyps with fossilized tentacles attached, reveal a continuous affinity for diversity throughout the geological eras. Tabulate corals can be seen in the left section: Pleurodictyum with the worm Hicetes as its inhabitant, below Halysites with over 5000 individually painted polyps, below Favosites. In the middle are rugose corals, with the colony Hexagonaria and the solitary corals Goniophyllum (pyramid-shaped when closed) and Calceola (shoe-shaped). The more modern, scleractinian corals range partly up to the present day, with Parasmilia (solitary cup), Thecosmilia (small colony) and Fungia (flat solitary).

digital painting, 2024

academic education, Tech.Univ. Bergakademie Freiberg