Major patterns in the fossil record revealed by the Paleobiology Database
The Paleobiology Database is a public resource for the scientific community. It
has been organized and operated by a multi-disciplinary, multi-institutional,
international group of paleobiological researchers. Its purpose is to provide
global, collection-based occurrence and taxonomic data for marine and
terrestrial animals and plants of any geological age, as well as web-based
software for statistical analysis of the data. The project’s wider, long-term
goal is to encourage collaborative efforts to answer large-scale
paleobiological questions by developing a useful database infrastructure and
bringing together large data sets.
The Database currently includes six main tables: references, taxonomic names,
taxonomic opinions, primary collection data, taxonomic occurrences, and
reidentifications of occurrences. The tables are tied together relationally
with record ID numbers. Most tables are relatively simple£ the collection table
has many fields that are described on a separate database structure page. We
are working to add tables that will handle taxonomic authority information and
taxonomic opinions (e.g., synonymies). At a later date we will add tables to
handle phylogenetic relationships, ecomorphological attributes, stratigraphic
sections, radioisotopic age estimates, and other data.
Some of the major datasets within the Paleobiology Database includes:
-North American Mammalian Paleofaunal Database 2002
-Middle Devonian fossils of the Michigan Basin
-Taxonomy and distribution of Late Jurassic - Eocene lissamphibians
-Jurassic marine faunas of France, Greenland, Portugal, and the United Kingdom
-Silurian and Early Devonian plants 2001
-Ivany Thesis Collection: Middle Eocene US Gulf Coast Macrofossils
-Maastrichtian bivalve faunas of the world 1994
-Marine Bivalve Genera, Revision of Sepkoski’s Compendium
-Upper Cretaceous larger invertebrate fossils from the Haustator bilira zone of
the Atlantic and Gulf Coastal Plains
-Ordovician marine faunas of the world
-Pennsylvanian-Permian Marine Benthos of the North American Midcontinent
-PGAP’s Permian, Triassic and Jurassic terrestrial megafloras of the world
-Paleozoic marine faunas from the paleocontinent of Laurentia 1992
-Carboniferous terrestrial floras of North America and Europe
-Late Paleocene - early Eocene macrofloras of southwestern Wyoming 2000.