PALEOSTRAT - A PARTNER AND DATABASE ENGINE FOR THE CHRONOS SYSTEM

PaleoStrat (http://paleostrat.org; or http://paleostrat.net; or www.paleostrat.com) was conceived in 1997 as a prototype information system for sedimentary, paleontologic, biostratigraphic, stratigraphic, geochemical, and paleomagnetic data. Since then, other efforts have emerged or are emerging, such as CHRONOS, GEON, and SedDB, among others, including international sites. Because PaleoStrat's purpose is to be a platform that is openly and easily available to the community, PaleoStrat, as an independent system, strives to work with these other efforts to help build a more broadly-based and effective system. For example, the data input through PaleoStrat and tools developed by both CHRONOS and PaleoStrat will be available through either the CHRONOS portal or the PaleoStrat web site.

PaleoStrat is being designed to help a broad range of research, including phylogenetic, paleobiologic, sequence stratigraphic, basin analysis, paleogeographic, and other studies that address a variety of questions about the evolution of tectonostratigraphic systems. The system targets research-grade data that are based on samples and the precise locations of these data in space and time. Spatial data focus on latitude and longitude and meters above the base of the section (or below the surface for wells). Temporal data is generally provided by biostratigraphic and/or geochronologic data.

Our purpose is to make all data available to the users via visualization tools (stratigraphic column, maps, etc; see abstract of Taylor at al., in this volume). Specifically, we are trying to build a suite of Web-based tools that will: 1) Allow all interested researchers located anywhere in the world access to a high-resolution, multitaxa biostratigraphic data sets. 2) Provide an interactive, web-based tools for correlation among stratigraphic sections, wells and drill holes based on research-grade data. 3) Incorporate high-precision geochronology to provide optimum age-control on period and stage boundaries. 4) Make all of these data interactively available on the Web, with a mirrored sites at CHRONOS, the USGS, and elsewhere to ensure perpetual availability of the data. To reach these goals, PaleoStrat will continue to build partnerships with other national and international databases.

PaleoStrat has been supported by National Science Foundation grants EAR 0106796, EAR-ITR 0218799 and EAR 0312392.