Paleobiology Database

Paleobiology Database
Name	Paleobiology Database
Formation	1998
Founder	John Alroy; Charles Marshall
Type	Scholarly database
Leader title	Director

Paleobiology Database

The Paleobiology Database is a community-driven digital repository that aggregates fossil occurrences, taxonomic opinions, stratigraphic data, and associated metadata for use in quantitative paleontology and related fields. It serves as a centralized resource for researchers working on fossils from localities around the world and integrates information supporting analyses in biogeography, macroevolution, paleoecology, and stratigraphy. The project has been cited in publications associated with large-scale syntheses and databases connected to museum collections and national surveys.

Overview

The project compiles primary data on fossil occurrences, taxonomic names, and stratigraphic contexts from published literature, museum collections, and field reports to support reproducible analyses in paleontology. It is widely used alongside institutional collections such as the Smithsonian Institution, the Natural History Museum, London, and the American Museum of Natural History and features contributions from academics affiliated with universities like University of California, Berkeley, Harvard University, Stanford University, University of Chicago, and University of Oxford. The database interoperates with large initiatives and standards-setting organizations including the Global Biodiversity Information Facility, the International Commission on Stratigraphy, the Biodiversity Heritage Library, and the International Paleontological Association.

History and development

The initiative traces to late 20th-century efforts to synthesize fossil occurrence data for macroevolutionary studies promoted by paleobiologists at institutions such as University of California, Los Angeles and University of Michigan. Early leadership involved researchers affiliated with Macquarie University and Harvard University who responded to calls from conferences like the International Congress on Systematic and Evolutionary Biology to standardize occurrence records. The project expanded through collaborations with museum curators from the Field Museum and national agencies including the United States Geological Survey and the Geological Survey of Canada. Over time, it incorporated data cleaning and taxonomic standardization influenced by methodologies developed at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute and by workshops organized at the University of Chicago and American Museum of Natural History.

Data content and scope

The repository contains millions of fossil occurrence records covering major geologic time intervals recognized by the Geologic Time Scale, including data tied to boundaries ratified by the International Commission on Stratigraphy and regional schemes used by the European Geosciences Union and the Geological Society of America. Records encompass taxa described in monographs and journals such as the Journal of Paleontology, Palaeontology (journal), Nature, Science, and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Geographic coverage spans continents and notable paleontological formations associated with sites like the Morrison Formation, Burgess Shale, Green River Formation, La Brea Tar Pits, and Messel Pit. The dataset records taxonomic concepts linked to authors who published names in outlets like the Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society and taxonomic revisions from monographs by curators at the Natural History Museum, London.

Database structure and standards

The system stores standardized fields for occurrence locality, age assignments tied to the Geologic Time Scale 2012 and subsequent updates endorsed by the International Commission on Stratigraphy, taxonomy following codes used by the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature and the International Code of Nomenclature for algae, fungi, and plants, and lithostratigraphic units aligned with conventions from the International Commission on Stratigraphy. Data models reflect provenance practices promoted at meetings hosted by the American Geophysical Union and use vocabularies compatible with the Global Biodiversity Information Facility and the Darwin Core standards. Semantic interoperability is supported by mappings to ontologies discussed at conferences such as the ISWC and by integration approaches used by the Biodiversity Heritage Library.

Access, tools, and services

Users access data through web interfaces developed by teams at universities and museums, programmatic APIs used by computational groups at Carnegie Mellon University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and export tools popular in workflows at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory and research centers collaborating with the National Science Foundation. Visualization and analysis tools connect with platforms like R and packages developed in community code repositories on services used by the Linux Foundation and academic consortia. Educational modules derived from the database have been incorporated into curricula at institutions such as University of California, Santa Cruz, Yale University, and University of Tokyo.

Governance and contributors

The project operates through a distributed governance model combining advisory boards, editorial committees, and volunteer contributors from academic institutions including University of California, Davis, University of Edinburgh, University of São Paulo, Peking University, and Australian National University. Funding and support have come from organizations such as the National Science Foundation, national research councils like the Australian Research Council, philanthropic entities active in science funding, and cooperative agreements with museums including the Natural History Museum, Los Angeles County. Contributor roles reflect practices established by societies such as the Paleontological Society.

Impact and use in research and education

The repository underpins macroevolutionary studies published in outlets like Nature, Science Advances, and Proceedings of the Royal Society B and informs synthetic projects associated with global initiatives such as the Global Biodiversity Information Facility and regional compilations coordinated by the European Union. It has enabled analyses of mass extinctions referenced in works on the Permian–Triassic extinction event and Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event, biogeographic syntheses involving faunas from the Cretaceous and Pleistocene, and stratigraphic correlation projects connected to the International Commission on Stratigraphy. In education, instructors at universities and museums use the data for labs and public exhibits alongside collections at institutions like the Natural History Museum, London and the Smithsonian Institution.

Category:Paleontology