Four-rayed star corals - Scientific observation print - Ernst Haeckel, Kunstformen der Natur

Engraving reproduction of: Four-rayed star corals

Original title Tetracoralla - Vierstrahlige Sternkorallen

Cyathophyllum Poster - Cnidarians of the Coral Class (Order Tabulates)

Illustration from the book Kunstformen der Natur, which is a collection of artistic lithographs of natural sciences published by the German biologist Ernst Haeckel between 1899 and 1904.

This naturalistic illustration is part of an overall style inspired by Ernst Haeckel, which greatly influenced the emerging Art Nouveau movement at the beginning of the ^20th century. This work, illustrating the impressive beauty and great diversity of the biological world, was complemented by a certain amount of scientific information, some excerpts of which are reproduced below.

This information is over 120 years old and some of it may be outdated!

Scientific classification:

 Cnidarian Phylum (Cnidaria)
Class Anthozoa (Anthozoa)
Legion of Star Corals (Zoantharia)
Order of Four-rayed Star Corals (Tetracoralla).

Scientific notice (extract) accompanying the poster print of Tetracoralla - Four-rayed star corals :

The figures in this plate represent in natural size (partly with low magnification) the solid internal calcareous skeletons of four-rayed star corals (Tetracoralla). This form-rich order of the coral class populated the Paleozoic seas many millions of years ago, during the Silurian, Devonian and Carboniferous periods. During the following Permian period (or at the latest in the Triassic period), these four-rayed star corals became completely extinct and were replaced by six-rayed ones (Plate 9). While in the latter, the body of each coral individual is composed of identical radiating parts (or parameres), in Tetracoralla there are only four (sometimes identical, Figs. 3, 4 and 13, sometimes bilaterally arranged, Figs. 5 and 11). Many Tetracoralla live in isolation, as single individuals (Figs. 1, 6-8); others form colonies or corms by budding (Figs. 2, 13-15). The finer details of body structure are preserved just as completely and clearly visible on the calcareous skeletons of the fossil Tetracoralla represented here as on the calcareous skeletons of living corals from which the soft parts have been removed (Plate 9).

Species present on the naturalist board of Four-rayed star corals - Cyathophyllum :

• Toreuma bellagemma
• Toreuma thamnostoma
• Cassiopeja cyclobalia