PaleoNICHES: Digitization of fossil collections

Our lab is currently funded through NSF Thematic Collections Network program to lead the digitization efforts for several museum collections of Cincinnatian fossils through our “Digitizing Fossils to Enable New Syntheses in Biogeography – Creating a PALEONICHES-TCN” (TCN stands for) grant. Our efforts are part of a large project in collaboration with Bruce Lieberman (Kansas) and Jon Hendricks (San Jose State) which is detailed on the Digital Atlas of Ancient Life website.

The focus of our lab is to digitize the Ohio University fossil collections, facilitate increased digitzation efforts for the collection of Co-PIs Dr. Brenda Hunda (Cincinnati Museum Center) and Dr. Kendall Hauer (Miami University) and to develop an online digital atlas for identification of Cincinnatian fossils: The Digital Atlas of Ordovician Life. This project is related to a broader natural history specimen digitization effort supported by the National Resource for Advancing Digitization of Biodiversity Collections (ADBC) called Integrated Digitized Biocollections, or iDigBio.

Associated with this work, the Stigall lab and PaleoNICHES group have developed a suite of online and mobile application (“app”) resources.

Ohio University Invertebrate Paleontology Collection data are available online via the iDigBio and GBIF portals (click on portal name).

Related publications:

Hendricks, J.R., Stigall, A.L. & Lieberman, B.S. 2015. The Digital Atlas of Ancient Life: delivering information on paleontology and biogeography via the web. Palaeontologia Electronica 18.2.3E: 1–9 Open Access

Stigall, A.L., Bauer, J.E. & Brame, H-M.R. 2014. The Digital Atlas of Ordovician Life: Digitizing and mobilizing data for paleontologists and the public. Estonian Journal of Earth Sciences, 63(4): 312-316. Open Access

This research has been supported by grants from the National Science Foundation and Ohio University.
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