How did corals recover after the extinction of reef-building rudists?

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Messinian Stage — Tertiary Period Gypsum cones, which resulted from the evaporation of the Mediterranean Sea during the Messinian Salinity Crisis, in the Sorbas basin, Spain.

Following the mass extinction at the end of the Cretaceous Period, which resulted in the disappearance of reef-building rudist bivalves, reef-building corals underwent a recovery process. By the Eocene Epoch, these corals had successfully reestablished themselves, and their continuous stratigraphic record in low-latitude regions serves as a key indicator for the persistence of the tropical realm during the Tertiary Period.1