54 New Approaches to Old Fossil Collections

Material collected during the early history of paleontology conserves deep time ecosystems and remains available for study. We invite presentations of new analyses and interpretations of well-studied collections in the context of the broader history of the discipline.

Sunday, 19 October 2025
1:30 PM - 5:30 PM
HBGCC, 303AB

Facilitating the Discovery and Use of Paleontological Specimen Data Via Community-driven Enhancement of Information Ecosystems

Paper number: 54-12
Program: Technical Sessions
Time: 4:30 PM – 4:45 PM

Authors

Abstract

Globally, the paleontology collections community has invested heavily in digitization of primary specimen data over the past decade, including over $10 million funded through competitive awards in the United States alone. These data provide an important deep time complement to extant biodiversity data and a broader scope of data compared to literature only-based resources such as the Paleobiology Database, but they are disproportionately less discoverable and in turn underutilized for research applications. Over the past two years, we have explored these issues as part of ongoing investigations into the creation, sharing, use, and discoverability of fossil collections data; here we present our process and key findings. Using a community-based approach that centers the role of humans in open science cyberinfrastructure, we gathered feedback from a broad network of stakeholders and audiences–including researchers, collections professionals, and maintainers and developers of cyberinfrastructure and associated tools. Feedback was then incorporated into a high-level assessment of gaps in shared global data infrastructure and tailored recommendations for key partners was developed and incorporated into a document titled “The Paleo Roadmap.” The recommendations are designed to be specific, actionable, and scalable as they lay the foundation for building out a network of FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable), CARE (Collective benefit, Authority to control, Responsibility, Ethics), and research-ready data. The results also include resources to help improve data at its source (i.e. museum or repository) and to provide a mechanism for increasing data mobilization from paleontology collections at all scales. Critically, we present these recommendations as a result of coordinated community action, both through the project at hand and the longer-term perspective of the Paleo Data Working Group (https://paleo-data.github.io).

Geological Society of America Abstracts with Programs. Vol. 57, No. 6

doi: 10.1130/abs/2025AM-413455

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