Creating A PALEONICHES

Digitization TCN: Digitizing Fossils to Enable New Syntheses in Biogeography - Creating a PALEONICHES

Project Summary

Museum collections of fossils, along with their associated locality data, provide millions of records representing data on the temporal and geographic distribution of species in deep time. However, to reach their greatest scientific potential, these collections data need to be available on-line and in a format that facilitates quantitative biogeographic analyses. We will enter information about the age and precise location of fossil specimens from parts of several key paleontological collections into electronic databases. During this process improvements to computer programs for collections will be enhanced to allow paleontological specimens to be integrated with modern specimen data, thereby benefiting research on distribution of organisms over time. Our efforts will digitize nearly 450,000 specimens belonging to 900 species from several museums throughout the U.S. and will focus on three different time periods in the history of life: the Ordovician, Pennsylvanian, and Neogene. We will create on line digital atlases illustrating and describing these fossils and providing maps showing where they can be found. We will also create an 'app' so these atlases can be used on handheld devices out in the field.

The museum collections and fossils provide large amounts of data useful for studying what causes species to migrate, go extinct, or evolve over long time periods. They are of great relevance for considering how global change has and will continue to affect life on this planet. Our study will make these data available on line and accessible to scientists, facilitating many scientific analyses. The on-line and portable device digital atlases will be useful for educating amateur paleontologists and K-12 students about fossils both in classrooms and in the field. We will also provide training to students and scholars. This award is made as part of the National Resource for Digitization of Biological Collections through the Advancing Digitization of Biodiversity Collections program and all data resulting from this award will be available through the national resource (https://www.idigbio.org).

Current Research

Thus far ~700,000 specimens have been databased and 9,000 localities have been georeferenced. Further, these data have been shared with iDigBio and provided on line via institutional websites. We have created online digital atlases, www.digitalatlasofancientlife.org, for more than 900 species from the time intervals studied. For each species ecological, stratigraphic, and taxonomic information is provided, along with images and geographic range maps. Our Digital Atlas of Ancient Life project is described in greater detail in an article in Palaeontologia Electronica in 2015. Our Digital Atlas of Ancient Life “App” is available at the Apple App Store for free download. Studies associated with the project have been published by the PIs in several journals including: Global Biogeography and Ecology; Journal of Biogeography; Paleobiology; and Proceedings of the Royal Society, Series B. A total of 9 graduate students (seven of them women), ten undergraduate students (eight of them women), and one female post-doctoral fellow received training and were supported by this project.

Project Leadership

Project Sponsor: University of Kansas

Principal Investigators (PIs): Bruce Lieberman (PI), Jonathan Hendricks (PI), Alycia Stigall (PI), James Beach (Co-PI), Una Farrell (Co-PI)

NSF Award Number

1206757

Project Website

http://www.digitalatlasofancientlife.org/

Collaborators Map

https://www.idigbio.org/content/digitization-tcn-digitizing-fossils-enable-new-syntheses-biogeography-creating-paleoniches

Project Collaborators

Cincinnati Museum Center
Miami University of Ohio
Ohio University
San Jose State University (no data)
University of Florida, Florida Museum of Natural History
University of Kansas
University of Texas - Austin (PEN)
Yale University, Peabody Museum (PEN)