GEOREFERENCING CRETACEOUS MOLLUSCA OF THE WESTERN INTERIOR SEAWAY IN A GIS FRAMEWORK

The Invertebrate Paleontology Department at the American Museum of Natural History houses a large collection of Late Cretaceous Mollusca including Cephalopoda from the Western Interior Seaway(WIS) from approximately 500 localities in the Northern Great Plains. The AMNH localities were documented as township/range (TRS) or lat/long, with bio-lithostratigraphic information. As part of an NSF TCN grant, we initiated a digitization effort to georeference localities, database, and image specimens. (Digitization TCN: Collaborative Research: Cretaceous World: Digitizing Fossils to Reconstruct Evolving Ecosystems in WIS. NSF award 1601891.) Georeferencing information for localities was initially compiled from approximately 10,000 museum specimens using several programs, chiefly GEOlocate, Google Maps and Google Earth while following the MaNIS/HerpNet/ORNIS georeferencing guidelines. TRS data were treated in GEOLocate, and when this approach did not work, we geocoded in a GIS framework. Once the locality information was converted to lat/long coordinates, a table of 10,000 rows and tens of attributes of different kinds was assembled which underwent a series of automated and manual data cleansing procedures. As a result two related tables were produced: the localities and the specimens. This presentation shows the resulting locality and specimen tables after they were transferred to a GIS system and include a digital map in a Maps Portal Application (WebApp). The WebApp uses filtering and querying tools on the primary attributes of the specimens and allows users a choice of options to perform further data cleansing as well as data retrieval. Additional developments will be made to the WebApp in the near future in order to enhance the final user options. Furthermore, the data will be made available online, increasing our knowledge of the fossil record, and will be ideal for use with an assortment of modern quantitative tools that will help improve paleoclimate and paleoceanographic models.