Cyathophora sp.

Cyathophora It is a cnidarian belonging to the order Scleractinia. The scleractinians  are an order of anthozoan cnidarians of the subclass Hexacoralario, also known as stony corals either hard corals. They are exclusively marine animals that do not have a jellyfish state and whose life cycle exclusively includes the polyp state. They generate a hard skeleton and their number of tentacles is six or multiples of six.

They are known as scleractinian corals because they have sclerites that give them protection. These hard sclerites are produced by specialized cells and made of calcite, a type of calcium carbonate. So it is said that they secrete a skeleton of calcium carbonate. This element provides them with the hard texture, thanks to which, since the Upper Triassic, scleractinian corals went from a minority participation in reef communities to constituting the basic building blocks of tropical coral reefs.