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JOIN THE PALEOBIOLOGY DATABASE The Paleobiology Database (http://paleodb.org) welcomes all professional paleontologists who wish to contribute to this collaborative, web-based, international project. The Database's mission is to provide a global, discipline-wide repository for taxonomic and paleoecological data and a research tool for paleontology in the 21st century. The Database comprises taxonomic lists, abundance data, contextual information on fossil assemblages, ecological assignments of taxa, synonymies, classifications, and digital images. The Database spans the entire Phanerozoic and includes marine and terrestrial, plant and animal, and macrofossil and microfossil data. We encourage the participation of paleontological colleagues from Europe and elsewhere around the globe. CURRENT CONTENTS OF THE DATABASE The Database currently involves 89 data authorizers and 100 data enterers from 55 research institutions in 10 countries. The Database includes accounts of 38,570 fossil collections, 400,446 occurrences of taxa in collections, authority data on 57,238 taxa, and 79,070 classification and synonymy opinions (including Jack Sepkoski's global compendia of marine invertebrate families and genera). The data are tied to 10,371 published references. Just over the past 12 months, 7434 collections, 71,401 occurrences, and 1982 references have been entered into the Database. The Database includes working groups on marine invertebrates, paleobotany, vertebrate paleontology, taphonomy, and taxonomy, and involves participation from collaborative projects such as the Evolution of Terrestrial Ecosystems consortium, the Paleogeographic Atlas Project, and the Palaeoinformatic Approach to the Context of Earliest Human Dispersals, which is funded by the British National Research Council. Most of the fossil collections are split between marine invertebrates (55%), vertebrates (25%), and plants (18%). A significant amount of data from across the globe already is included in the Database, with substantial information on Europe, Africa, and Asia, and with 48% of our fossil collection records coming from elsewhere than North America. However, we seek to make the Database as inclusive as possible, in order to build a truly international database that fully incorporates the taxonomic expertise of the global paleontological community. We therefore encourage paleontologists from around the world to join with us in making the Paleobiology Database a data repository for the entire discipline. HOW AND WHY TO JOIN Requirements for becoming a data contributor are minimal: contributors must have an advanced degree in paleontology (normally a Ph.D.) and must intend to contribute a substantial amount of data. Simply write an e-mail to the Database coordinator (alroy@nceas.ucsb.edu) and state your academic background, planned focus on a time interval, geographic area, and taxonomic group, and planned time frame for your project. Following consultation with our 15-member Advisory Board, the Database coordinator will set up an account for you and your students right away. There are many advantages to joining the Database. You can reposit your data in a fully relational database with sophisticated, web-based data entry and analysis software. You won't need to design your own system, but you will have a say in software development, and you will be using communally endorsed data definitions. Only you have the right to alter your data, and you can set aside data from being viewed for several years. You can download your data plus the enormous amount of existing public data at any time, and the data are fully backed up at five different research institutions. You can form collaborations and share data with other Database members. The fact that you are repositing data in the world's largest paleontology database may raise your profile with funding agencies. Finally, by repositing your data you create a permanent record of your work and help to create synergy throughout the discipline. John Alroy University of California, Santa Barbara alroy@nceas.ucsb.edu Franz Fuersich Universitaet Wuerzburg franz.fuersich@mail.uni-wuerzburg.de Wolfgang Kiessling Museum fuer Naturkunde, Berlin Wolfgang.Kiessling@MUSEUM-HU.Berlin.de Charles Marshall Harvard University cmarshal@oeb.harvard.edu Arnie Miller University of Cincinnati arnold.miller@uc.edu Franz Fürsich <franz.fuersich@mail.uni-wuerzburg.de>
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