DIGITAL INVERTEBRATES AND MORE: INVERTEBRATE PALEONTOLOGY IN THE 21ST CENTURY

At the Florida Museum of Natural History, the Invertebrate Paleontology (IP) Collection has grown rapidly over the past 35 years. The collection holdings provide valuable insight into past invertebrate life, particularly that of the southeastern United States and circum-Caribbean, and serve as a resource to the scientific community. In this report, we provide an update on the growth of the collection, as well as development (educational and otherwise) of additional resources pertaining to its holdings.

Through creation of this content, we seek to broadly publicize the findings of our research to Florida citizens and beyond; provide resources for basic identification and education about Florida’s fossil invertebrate history, particularly as it relates to the Cenozoic Era; and develop media that reaches both professional and avocational communities. Results of these goals will be located primarily on the collection website (https://www.floridamuseum.ufl.edu/invertpaleo/) as they are refined and completed.

One byproduct of these endeavors is image galleries of fossil material. Images are divided into the following categories: Florida invertebrates (e.g., Mollusca, Cnidaria, Arthropods), holotypes, and non-Florida invertebrates (primarily from elsewhere in the southeastern United States and circum-Caribbean). The number of images in a gallery varies from a dozen to several hundred. Currently, these galleries are accessible through key terms in an online collections management (Specify 6) portal; however, functionality and searching are being refined over the coming months.

Based on these image galleries, and additional, unpublished images, initial steps are underway to create a virtual collections experience that will highlight often unseen and unknown parts of the collection. Using a combination of photographs, short videos, and other media, visitors will be able to access the collection in a variety of ways from any device with internet capability. As personnel and budget are often limited, we hope that this resource will allow more visitors to access and enjoy the contents of the collection.