paleonet Paleo Portal

[Thomas Yancey <yancey@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

A few days ago Tim White posted an announcement concerning the 
availability of the Paleo Portal. I thought it to be a good concept 
and contacted a person with a good collection of high quality images 
of Carboniferous fossils to consider submitting his images to Paleo 
Portal pages. Upon investigation of the procedures for submitting 
photos, it turns out that high quality photos cannot be included at 
this time. This seems to defeat one of the most desirable features of 
an effort of this type and relegates Paleo Portal to the status of a 
decorative function rather than an educational or research function. 
The photo library of fossils is hardly adequate to use in identifying 
fossils, either at the group level or at the species level.

The problems relate to the image size limitations and the need to 
re-size or re-format all images submitted. They are all jpeg or gif 
images, of small size. All photos are standarized, but after 
modification of even high quality images, the images available on the 
Paleo Portal pages are low resolution and too small for use in 
identifying most fossils. At present there is no possibility of 
having multiple views of a specimen or close-up views of critical 
features. The other problem is that the portal is a passive 
accumulation of photos that altruistic individuals are willing to 
submit, rather than having a more systematic collections of groups. 
This latter limitation is common to databases compilations, but it 
presents difficulties to someone trying to use the site to identify 
fossils from a collection. They will still have to go to primary 
literature for a first round effort.

Paleo Portal acknowledges the National Science Foundation for support 
in setting up the site, but there still is much needed to make this a 
practical site. An effort similar to the trilobite site of Sam Gon is 
needed, where coverage is extensive and images are excellent. It 
seems that public institutions will find it very difficult to match 
the efforts of individuals like Sam Gon, who create web sites for the 
pleasure of sharing information. In fact, it may be cost prohibitive 
for public institutions, museums or agencies to achieve the level of 
quality of the Sam Gon www.trilobites.info or Mike Everhart's Oceans 
of Kansas web sites.

T. Yancey