SERVING UP A BIOSTRATIGRAPHIC MENU

The U.S. Geological Survey highlights practical applications of paleontology by incorporating geologic context, map and stratigraphic information, with fossil inventory data. Paleodata, the National Paleontologic Database for the USGS, is an integral part of the National Geologic Map Database (http://ncgmp.usgs.gov/ngmdbproject) interweaving the geologic map, geologic names, and paleontologic databases to 1:100k topographic maps of the US. Geologic context information includes available geologic maps, columnar sections, important range charts, and stratigraphic citations for the fossil localities. Fossil information includes locality, faunal lists, author citations, and representative scans of the published fossil photographs from each quadrangle, tied to the fossil repository number and museum contact. The most common problems in populating the prototype of Paleodata were the notoriously uneven quality of locating ability and locality description by paleontologists, and Federal Land Managers' penchant for withholding locality information. For fossil localities within federal and state land jurisdictions, pertinent contact information is provided. Locality data for larger vertebrates are strictly referred to the land managers.

Paleodata is also part of the USGS Paleontology web page on practical applications of paleontology for resource, framework, environment and forensic investigations. This page presents a variety of posters on examples of successful applications of paleontology to solve problems. This page, in turn, is linked to systematic paleontology pages, regional and thematic databases, and pertinent information from amateur and professional sources.

Though the database consists of just a few map quadrangles at present, there is a great sense of urgency to get as much information digitized as possible as our institutional memory gets shorter and shorter in the massive influx of data in the modern information age.