T288 Advancing the Digitization of Paleontology and Geoscience Collections: Projects, Programs, and Practices I

Wednesday, 22 October 2014
8:00 AM - 12:00 PM
223/224

THE NEOGENE ATLAS OF ANCIENT LIFE:  A NEW DIGITAL RESOURCE FOR PALEONTOLOGY

Paper number: T288-7
Program: Technical Sessions
Time: 9:30 AM – 9:45 AM

Authors

Abstract

The Neogene Atlas of Ancient Life (www.neogeneatlas.org) is a new online resource developed to assist the general public and scientific community with species-level fossil identifications and to provide information about the ancient geographic distributions of those species across multiple time intervals. The current focus of the Neogene Atlas is the rich Neogene (defined here to include the Miocene, Pliocene, and Pleistocene) fossil record of the southeastern United States. The Neogene Atlas is akin to a naturalist’s field guide for fossils from this area, many of which are still extant.

Each species-level account in the atlas includes: 1) a taxonomic tree; 2) a listing of stratigraphic occurrences; 3) paleogeographic distributional information, including maps generated for multiple time slices; and 4) high quality images of one or more fossils shown in multiple views. A Creative Commons license has been applied to all content, allowing it to be used freely for non-commercial purposes such as education or academic research.

All spatiotemporal occurrence records are derived from the collections (and associated database) of the Division of Invertebrate Paleontology at the Florida Museum of Natural History. Atlas pages are currently available for over 230 species of Neogene mollusks, echinoderms, cnidarians, arthropods, and brachiopods and at least 500 such pages are planned.

The Neogene Atlas of Ancient Life is a component of the National Science Foundation-supported Digital Atlas of Ancient Life (www.digitalatlasofancientlife.org) project. Digital Atlases are also currently available for the Ordovician of the Cincinnati Region (www.ordovicianatlas.org) and the Pennsylvanian of the American Midcontinent (www.pennsylvanianatlas.org).