Paleobiodiversity
Baltoscandian fossils on the web
Olle Hints
Institute of Geology at Tallinn University of Technology
[email protected]
Ordovician
Radiation
Cambrian
Explosion
O-S Extiction
The Baltoscandian fossil record
Greenland
Siberia
Arctic
W Canada
Altai
E. Canada
746
Russia
NW 370
Sweden
1682
E. & MW.
USA: 589
Estonia
2000
Lithuania
350
Latvia
500
U.K
Korea
Ukraine
Norway
270
Belarus
Baltoscandian paleobasin:
a shallow epicontinental sea during
Early Paleozoic, 540-360 My ago
Tarim
China
S.China
230
Germ.
PortuFrance
gal
285
Czech
.
Austria
Iran
Portugal
o
Spain
Morocco
Algeria
1105
Niger
Flor.
India
Libya
S.
Afri.
Tchad
Australia
South Pole
Brasil
Argentina
Data on chitinozoans (enigmatic group
of fossils, extremely useful for dating
rocks worldwide), showing importance
of the Baltic region.
Online resources on fossils
• Paleobiology Database
– built and used by scientists
– no regional context
– few data from the Baltic region and
Early Paleozoic
• Taxon specific databases
– few, but some are good (Bryozoa)
• Museum websites
– collection databases
– some educational resources
• Data harvesting and presenting
services
– GBIF, BioCASe
– GeoCASe
– Encyclopedia of Life (and Death)
In Baltoscandia
• Baltoscandian data poorly represented in global data bases
• Regional databases and websites
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–
–
–
Estonian geocollections
Swedish natural history collections include fossils
Few other random sites devoted to fossils
But
• no up-to-date taxon checklists
• no good resources for teaching and public education that provide local
and regional context (incl local languages)
• To fill this gap we started a database of Baltoscandian fossil
taxa under the BalticDiversity project in late 2011
• Paleo-counterpart of naturforskaren.se and elurikkus.ut.ee
• Available at fossiilid.info
The data
• 11 000 fossil taxa (and growing)
– 6500 species, 2500 genera, 2000 higher taxa
– starting from less than 1000 two years ago
• 135 000 digitised taxon occurrence records
– 125 000 collection-based (>100000 to be added)
– 10 000 reference-based (and growing)
• 43 000 images (>70% fossils)
– 21 000 added in 2 years
• Elsewhere
– Sweden (Dina) ~75 000 digital collections records
– Finland ~30 000 digital collections records
– Norway, Denmark, Latvia, Lithuania, NW Russia
Some technical details
• Database design
– part of the Estonian national geocollections database
used in three institutions
– MySQL, PHP, Python/Django, etc
– Relational data model with 100+ tables
– Different web-based and thick clients for internal use
• Public interface at fossiilid.info
– backend: Python/Django (switch from php a month
ago)
– frontend: HTML, AJAX, jQuery, OpenLayers, etc
Future tasks
• Short term developments (2013)
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–
–
–
Professional facelift of the portal
Fully multilingual UI (Estonian, English, Finnish, Swedish, Russian?)
Simple APIs to share data with other portals
Implementing SPM for taxon pages
• Mid- and long term (2014+)
– Content, content, content
• taxa, specimens, references, images, taxon descriptions
• complete €-D fossils so that all taxa are included
– Interactive identification keys and guides
– Location-based services and better maps
• „show me the nearest fossil sites“
• additional paleogeographic maps
– Reporting fossil finds by hobby scientists, social media integration
– Resource for nature conservation specialists
• protected fossils and sites
• Please test, any feedback will be appreciated