One of the most widespread and abundant habitat forming deep‐sea corals in the South Pacific region is Solenosmilia variabilis . The age of this species was assessed using radiocarbon content ( 14 C) on long dead, recently dead, and live branch sections of coral reef matrix sampled from the New Zealand region. Conventional 14 C colony ages (yrs BP), for the living, recently dead, and long dead samples, ranged from 803 to 1186...