RECONSTRUCTING REEFS FROM REPOSITORIES: TRACKING THE REEF BUILDERS THROUGH TIME AND SPACE

Digitization of repository collections provides an ever-expanding data resource. A range of data is encoded within this resource, such as basic catalog record details of each specimen, high resolution imagery of key specimens, georeferenced collection localities, and (perhaps equally important) the knowledge of this specimen’s existence and storage information. Individual repositories can also enhance the scope for research by opening their data for mining by data portals, such as PaleoPortal. The scientific value of such data, however, always rests on the quality and integrity of the original information gathered and recorded in the field and the care with which such data is migrated into the digital domain.

The Non-vertebrate Paleontology lab contains key research collections that span the time from the initial surveys of the State of Texas to current research projects. The holdings include major reef- and mound- building organisms from the Cambrian through to the Holocene. In most cases those reef-builders are accompanied by other faunal elements, providing a valuable glimpse of biotic interactions in deep time.

The digital data can be searched by any recorded attribute and mapped onto other digital resources such as geologic maps or models of plate reconstructions. The potential value for modern reef studies is enormous, because the deep time laboratory is perhaps the only way to examine true long-term effects of global change on the diversity and composition of reef organisms. As these global events become better constrained, fossil specimens from the same chronostratigraphic interval become more informative.