Corals from an Early Jurassic coral reef in British Columbia: refuge on an oceanic island reef

An Early Jurassic (Sinemurian) reef in the Telkawa Range, British Columbia Canada, yields coral species previously known from Morocco, Great Britain, Italy, Peru, and Chile. The principal constructional coral, Phacelostylophyllum rugosum (Laube), known from the Upper Triassic Dolomite Alps in northern Italy, is a holdover species. This coral survived the mass extinctions of the end-Triassic without leaving any other Jurassic records outside Canada. Other corals from the Telkwa reef include Stylophyllopsis victoriae (Duncan) and Actinastraea minima Beauvais known from Jurassic rocks of the Tethys. Closely related corals, Phacelostylophyllum chocolatensis (Wells) and Actinastraea plana (Duncan), are from southern Peru. The paleogeographic Occurrence of the Canadian reef in the volcanic terrane of Stikinia supports the contention that volcanic islands in distant outposts of the ancient Pacific served as refugia. In the aftermath of the end-Triassic reef decimation affecting the Tethys, corals and reef-building activities continued on ancient islands of the ancestral Pacific. The Hispanic Corridor, connecting the western Tethys with the western Pacific, may have played an important role during Sinemurian time. ***Reef; corals, Triassic, Jurassic, extinctions, paleobiogeography.