Lithotelestidae is a family of

coral Corals are marine invertebrates within the class Anthozoa of the phylum Cnidaria. They typically form compact colonies of many identical individual polyps. Coral species include the important reef builders that inhabit tropical oceans and ...

in the order

Helioporacea Helioporacea is an order of the subclass Octocorallia that forms massive lobed crystalline calcareous skeletons in colonial corals. These corals first appeared in the Cretaceous period. It consists of two families, Helioporidae Moseley, 1876Mose ...

. It was erected in 1977 by Frederick Bayer and Katherine Muzik. It is characterized by a crystalline

aragonite Aragonite is a carbonate mineral, one of the three most common naturally occurring crystal forms of calcium carbonate, (the other forms being the minerals calcite and vaterite). It is formed by biological and physical processes, including pre ...

skeleton formed by stolons and calices, cylindrical calices with secondary lateral calices, and fully retractable polyps with an

exoskeleton An exoskeleton (from Greek ''éxō'' "outer" and ''skeletós'' "skeleton") is an external skeleton that supports and protects an animal's body, in contrast to an internal skeleton (endoskeleton) in for example, a human. In usage, some of the ...

formed of calcite capstans and crosses.

Genera

*'' Epiphaxum'' Lonsdale, 1850Lonsdale, W. (1850). Notes on the corals. In Dixon, F. (Ed.), ''The Geology and Fossils of the Tertiary and Cretaceous Formations of Sussex'' (pp. 237–324). London: Brown, Green, and Longmans. *'' Nanipora'' Miyazaki & Reimer, 2015Miyazaki, Y. & Reimer, J. (2015). A new genus and species of octocoral with aragonite calcium-carbonate skeleton (Octocorallia, Helioporacea) from Okinawa, Japan. ''ZooKeys'', 511, 1–23.

References

Helioporacea {{Octocorallia-stub