Welcome to the Paleo Data Portal! This portal is under construction as part of the project, Community-driven enhancement of information ecosystems for the discovery and use of paleontological specimen data (NSF Awards 2324688, 2324689, and 2324690). The Symbiota Support Hub (Arizona State University), the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, and the University of Colorado Museum of Natural History will be working to establish this new Symbiota portal community in 2023-2025.
During the current funding cycle, the objectives of this portal will be to 1) provide paleontological collections with a low-barrier-to-entry platform for data mobilization and management, and 2) serve as an evaluation and implementation testing ground for many of the cyberinfrastructure developments identified as part of the aforementioned project. Once fully installed, this data portal will be available as a data aggregator and collections management system for fossil specimen data.
This Symbiota-based portal is primarily for fossil collections that intend to actively manage specimen occurrence records within this data portal. Publicly accessible research collections that have not directly benefited from the US National Digitization effort, and/or do not have access to secure cyberinfrastructure to maintain their specimen data are especially encouraged to participate. Prospective data providers are strongly encouraged to review the portal's official Community Guidelines and may apply by completing this form.
In order to maximize the interoperability and research utility of the data managed in this portal, data contributors will be encouraged to participate in the Paleo Data Working Group (PDWG), a community of practice for paleontological collections and informatics professionals who aim to develop and promote best practices for managing and digitizing fossil specimens. Further guidance for portal data contributors will be provided by a forthcoming Community Knowledge Hub intended to document related best practices based on the requirements-gathering activities of PDWG and the aforementioned NSF Awards (#2324688–90).