A brief review of the stony coral (Cnidaria: Anthozoa: Scleractinia) papers published by Zootaxa in its first 20 years.

In the 20 year history of Zootaxa, thirty-two papers have been published having Scleractinia as its primary focus. Twenty-four of the 32 scleractinian papers deal with Recent taxa, most of which belonging to shallow-water, reef corals. The 8 publications dealing with fossil Scleractinia include 3 monographic works, three papers discussing nomenclatural issues of individual taxa, and 2 papers deal with various aspects of select genera.

New taxonomic, stratigraphic, and geographic information on the genus Faksephyllia Floris, 1972 (Scleractinia; Caryophylliidae); first records from the Oligocene of Austria, Germany, and Italy.

The scleractinian genus Faksephyllia Floris, 1972, is revised based on the study of original and topotypic material as well as original descriptions. Representatives of this genus have been reported from only a small number of lower Paleogene localities, including the Danian of Azerbaijan, Denmark (Greenland), Kazakhstan, and Sweden, as well as the Paleocene of Austria and Denmark (Fakse). New material belonging to the type species of Faksephyllia (F. faxoensis) is described from the Lower Oligocene of Austria (Northern Calcareous Alps, Tyrol). In addition, material from the Oligocene of Germany and the Lower Oligocene of Italy, formerly grouped with the genera Calamophyllia and Rhabdophyllia, are here re-assigned and transferred to Faksephyllia. The genus Faksephyllia remains a monospecific taxon, including only the type species, Faksephyllia faxoensis (Beck, in Lyell). In addition, Faksephyllia represents the earliest colonial genus among the caryophylliids.

Paraclausastrea vorarlbergensis sp. nov.; a new coral from the Lower Cretaceous of western Austria (Scleractinia; upper Barremian-lower Aptian; Schrattenkalk Fm.; Vorarlberg).

The new taxon Paraclausastrea vorarlbergensis sp. nov. is described from the upper Barremian-lower Aptian (Schrattenkalk Fm.) of western Austria (Vorarlberg). It belongs to the montlivaltiids and is characterized by thamnasterioid to submeandroid corallite integration, diameters of corallites ranging between 3 and 6.5 mm, and septa that are generally developed in 4 incomplete cycles in 6 generally irregular systems. In a small number corallites that are around 6 mm in diameter, 4 complete cycles are present. In corallites that are around 2 mm in diameter, usually between 12 and 18 septa are present. The new species differs from all other forms of Paraclausastrea in having the largest number of septa. This is the first report of this genus for the Schrattenkalk Formation.

Evolutionary diversification of reef corals: a comparison of the molecular and fossil records.

Understanding historical patterns of diversity dynamics is of paramount importance for many evolutionary questions. The fossil record has long been the only source of information on patterns of diversification, but the molecular record, derived from time-calibrated phylogenies, is becoming an important additional resource. Both fossil and molecular approaches have shortcomings and biases. These have been well studied for fossil data but much less so for molecular data and empirical comparisons between approaches are lacking. Here, we compare the patterns of diversification derived from fossil and molecular data in scleractinian reef coral species. We also assess the robustness of molecular diversification rates to poor taxon sampling. We find that the temporal pattern of molecular diversification rates is robust to incomplete sampling when rates are calculated per interval. The major obstacle of molecular methods is that rate estimates are distorted because diversification rates can never be negative, whereas the fossil record suffers from incomplete preservation and inconsistent taxonomy. Nevertheless, the molecular pattern of diversification is comparable to the pattern we observe in the fossil record, with the timing of major diversification pulses coinciding in each dataset. For example, both agree that the end-Triassic coral extinction was a catastrophic bottleneck in scleractinian evolution.