DEVELOPING A PALEONTOLOGICAL LOCALITY DATABASE AT BADLANDS NATIONAL PARK

Established in 2004, the Badlands National Park Paleontological Locality Database is the product of collaboration between paleontologists from the National Park Service and cooperating universities. A total of 253 sites have been recorded to date. Localities have been documented from Tertiary and Mesozoic stratigraphic units found within the park and include both invertebrate and vertebrate fossils. A locality is defined as a geographically contained area limited to one stratigraphic unit. When documenting a locality, paleontologists begin with the richest portion of the fossil accumulation and prospect to the outer boundaries of the deposit.

The database consists of historical paleontological localities, fossil sites found through six years of surveys of the Poleslide and Scenic Members of the Brule Formation and recent discoveries made by researchers, park employees and park visitors. Over the past two years, Badlands National Park has received small grants to survey new areas where localities have not yet been documented. Each summer, a team of seasonal employees and interns prospect a designated area for potential new fossil sites. Once a locality has been defined, its geographic location is documented through the use of a Trimble GeoXT GPS unit and all locality information is stored in the park GIS database. The main portion of the Badlands National Park Paleontology Locality Database has been set up in Microsoft Access which contains the following information: stratigraphic position, major taxa, depositional environment, associated publications and a cross reference to research permits and museum records. A site assessment is also completed based on the following features: rates of erosion, access from public use areas, signs of poaching, abundance of fossils and the number of visits to the site. At present, funding can be obtained to inventory new fossil sites but not for monitoring. With the passage of the Paleontological Resource Preservation Act (Public Law 111-11), which mandates the protection of fossil sites on federal lands, it is hoped that funding can be obtained to complete follow-up monitoring as well.