“REMAINS TO BE DISCOVERED”: A SYSTEMATIC PLAN TO DOCUMENT PALEONTOLOGICAL RESOURCES IN NATIONAL PARK SERVICE INVENTORY AND MONITORING NETWORKS

The number of National Park Service areas known to preserve paleontological resources continues to increase as inventory and documentation efforts progress. Currently, there are more than 180 National Park Service (NPS) areas with fossils, even though only 14 have paleontological resources in their enabling legislation. A primary goal of the NPS Paleontology Program is to provide parks, especially those established to preserve other resources, baseline data for science-based paleontological resource stewardship. Cooperating with the NPS Inventory & Monitoring (I&M) Program, the Paleontology Program has developed a cost-effective methodology and report format to document paleontological resources within I&M Network parks and stimulate future research. Unlike park-specific or thematic inventories, I&M Network reports systematically assess paleontological resource potential for every park in a given network. This documentation effort emphasizes the comprehensive collection, review, and assembly of published and unpublished literature on parks' paleontological resources, and acquires additional information from partner institutions. A narrative written for each network park describes previous paleontological resource inventories, museum collections, known or potential fossils from geologic formations mapped within the park, and potential paleontological resource stewardship issues. Parks also receive a listing of cooperative projects, known data sets, and a bibliography. The narratives for each network park are compiled and distributed throughout the network following park and peer review. Field work is generally not included (minimizing cost), but reports highlight potential field work and foster contacts with other parks, agencies, and institutions. Since the strategy was piloted in 2002, reports have been completed for nearly half of the 32 I&M Networks (through FY2006). The I&M Program has provided funding to complete reports for the remaining networks during FY2006-2009, which will require significant contributions from partners, including both geology students and professionals, within and outside the NPS. Contact the authors for additional information.