Fossil occurrences of scleractinian (stony) corals from the Paleobiology Database

Example dataset to illustrate the package's basic functionalities.

Usage

data(corals)

Format

A data.frame with 29775 observations and 38 variables:

genus: Genus names of the occurrences. Cross referenced with a compiled table, the simplified version of this can be found in the supplementary material of Kiessling and Kocsis (2015).
collection_no: The number of the collection of the occurrence in the PaleoDB.
family: Family name of the occurrence.
abund_value: Abundance value.
abund_unit: Unit of abundance values.
reference_no: The reference number of the occurrence in the PaleoDB.
life_habit: The lifestyle of the occurring taxon.
diet: The diet of the occurring taxon.
country: Country of occurrence.
geoplate: Plate id of the occurrence.
lat: Present day latitude of the occurrence.
lng: Present day longitude of the occurrence.
paleolat: Reconstructed paleolatitude of the occurrence.
paleolng: Reconstructed paleolongitude of the occurrence.
period: Period of origin.
epoch: Epoch of origin.
subepoch: Subepoch of origin.
stage: Geologic stage of the embedding rocks.
early_interval: Early interval name registered in the PaleoDB dynamic time scale.
late_interval: Late interval name registered in the PaleoDB dynamic time scale.
max_ma: Maximum estimated age based on the PaleoDB dynamic time scale.
min_ma: Minimum estimated age based on the PaleoDB dynamic time scale.
stg: Bin number in the stage-level timescale stages.
ten: Bin number in the PaleoDB 10 million year resolution timescale tens.
env: Environment of the occurrence: reefal (r), non-reefal (nr) or unknown (uk), based on keys.
lith: Substrate of the occurrence: carbonate (c), siliciclastic (s) or unknown (uk), based on keys.
latgroup: Latitude of the occurrence: tropical (t) or non-tropical (nt).
bath: Inferred depth of the occurrence: deep (deep), shallow (shal) or unknown (uk), based on keys.
gensp: The binomen of the occurrence.
ecology: Symbiotic status of the occurring coral: zooxanthellate (z) or azooxanthellate (az, including apozooxanthellates).
ecologyMostZ: Symbiotic status of the occurring coral, incorporating the uncertainty of inferred symbiotic status. This variable includes assignment with the maximum likely number of zooxanthellate genera.
ecologyMostAZ: Symbiotic status of the occurring coral, incorporating the uncertainty of inferred symbiotic status. This variable includes assignment with the maximum likely number of azooxanthellate genera.
growth: Growth type of the coral: colonial or solitary.
integration: Integration of corallites from the scale of 0 to 4. solitary corals are marked with 0s.

Source

https://paleobiodb.org/

Details

This particular dataset was used in a study by Kiessling and Kocsis (2015). All occurrences of Scleractinia were downloaded from the Paleobiology Database (PaleoDB, https://paleobiodb.org/) on 23 September 2014, originally comprising 32420 occurrences. They were than cross-checked with data from Corallosphere (used be accessible at http://corallosphere.org). See the article text for details.

References

Kiessling, W., & Aberhan, M. (2007). Environmental determinants of marine benthic biodiversity dynamics through Triassic–Jurassic time. Paleobiology, 33(3), 414-434.